


Balance Requires Motion

by Nell65



Series: Living the Normal Life [2]
Category: La Femme Nikita the Series
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-06
Updated: 2010-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Michael first saw Nikita standing on his front porch, his whole world splintered and then, between one step and the next, remade itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to Living the Normal Life, or, more accurately, the continuation of it.
> 
> The first half of this series was one of the first stories I ever wrote, in those first heady months after the series ended. But I never quite finished it until this spring. It had a few gaps, a few bumpy spots and had been waiting all these years for that little bit more work smoothing and shaping to call it done.
> 
> Balance Requires Motion is, in contrast, entirely new work. Oh - the story has been in my head the whole time. Living there, taking up space, but I never got the words out into text and instead it was just images and lines of dialogue and a strong sense of the elements that the story required, all strung more or less on a single narrative thread. So in this time I currently have to write without interruption - I was able to pull this story out of my head and get it down in words for others to read.
> 
> It is not, as a result, exactly what I would have written 9 years ago -- and I feel certain, the better for it. I'm older, and in a different place, and my skills are different (I like to think improved) now as well. Some things would undoubtedly have changed just in the process of converting images to words, others, because I see the world differently now, with more years of living behind me, and still others, well, as you know, stories sometimes tell themselves in ways you don't anticipate when you first lift your fingers over the keyboard -- so as always, in the end, the story told itself in ways that surprised and pleased me.
> 
> It is, I warn you, an HR post series fic. That was always the story this story was telling. My love note to my favorite pairing, giving them the life they sometimes seemed to dream of but probably could never have. It is also, however, my reaction to many of the first flush of Michael raising Adam stories -- most of which drew, one way or another, a fairly awkward and unrealistic picture of parenthood -- or at least I thought they were. So, in the best fanfic traditions I decided to see if I could do better. I had NO idea when I started that it would take so flipping long (!), but here it is. Complete at last.
> 
> _For sk, the best beta reader and long time fandom friend a fic writer could have._

"Sugar? You got a minute?"

Nikita looked up from her computer to see Walter leaning around the doorjamb of the perch.

She smiled. "For you? Always."

To her surprise, Walter didn't step in. Instead, he said, "When you have some time, I have something in munitions to show you."

"Urgent?"

"No. Not at all."

"Okay." She flashed her old friend another quick smile, and returned to her work.

Two days later she strolled over to munitions. The gate was open so she walked in, calling Walter's name.

Walter ambled out from one of the further racks, a welcoming smile wreathing his face. "Hey you."

She grinned back. "Hey you."

"I was just thinking I needed some sunshine. You feel like a quick coffee up in the daylight?"

Nikita looked suspiciously at his seamed old face, wondering what he was up to this time. The weather in Paris in late November, as always, was gloomy, damp and chill. She answered slowly. "Okay. But coffee only. No shots this time."

Walter laughed. "No shots."

Once they had made their way to a favorite cafe and had piled up their winter coats on an empty chair, Walter spent a few minutes looking at her very carefully. Then he said, "I've decided I'd like to retire. Again. Permanently this time."

"Walter!" Nikita had been anticipating this for some time now, but it did not make it any easier to hear. "Are you sure?"

Walter shrugged eloquently. "I can't keep the young 'uns straight anymore kiddo. It's time to let someone else keep them safe."

Nikita knew he was right, knew it was the right choice for Walter and for the operatives, and for the Section, but it tore her heart all the same. He had been the only stable figure in all her years at the Section. From her first day until the day Michael left, Walter had been her teacher and sometime mentor, and in the eight years she had been in the perch, Walter had been her most trusted friend and cherished advisor. She protested for a bit, but it was pro-forma and they both knew it. At last she said, "Is this what you wanted to 'show' me?"

"Yep."

She squeezed his hand. "I love you."

He squeezed back, his grip still firm, his voice still graveled and strong. "I know you do. I love you too, sugar."

"When do you want to go?"

"Today?"

Nikita blinked in shock. "Just like that?"

"Toby and Phillipa are more than ready to step up to fill my shoes."

"Walter. No one can fill your shoes."

"Ha. Shoes are easy. What you're gonna miss is how I fill out my leather pants."

They walked back to the Section together, but Walter refused to let her escort him to level eight. "I'll go on my own steam, thanks. I know what waits for me. And you know too. And you know it isn't bad. And no one should see Operations crying."

"I'm not crying."

"Yes. You are. Go on to your quarters now and get your game face back on before you come out to face your troops."

She could only nod, and hug Walter long and hard, one last time.

*****

More than a week after Walter's departure Nikita was again preparing to head out into the world above for a short meeting, when she discovered a small package in her shoulder bag. It was an envelope she knew had not been in her bag before their last coffee together, and she knew as well that no one else had had access to her personal things since.

She had no time to deal with whatever parting gift Walter had left for her, so she put it away in her personal safe. She promised herself she would come back to it when she was ready, emotionally, to see whatever it was. When the gaping Walter-shaped hole in her life stopped hurting, quite so much.

Two months later, on Walter's birthday, Nikita decided she was as prepared as she would ever be to discover what Walter had left for her. After a quiet dinner by herself in her quarters, she sat on the sofa in front of the gas fire, glass of wine on the table beside her and the envelope in her hands. After taking a deep breath, she carefully opened it and slid the contents out into her lap.

And knitted her brows in surprise. It was a slim paperback book; so old and tattered it had lost the covers and the title pages. She rapidly flipped through it, looking for letters or writing in the margins or something that might be a code…. But she finally decided that the book itself must be the message, and so she began to read.

Two hours later she sat back and closed the book. She knew now what Walter's last gift was, but she had no idea what to do with the information. Well, other than the obvious, of course. She placed the slim book and the envelope into the fireplace and sealed the glass doors. Then, with the handy remote, she selected the setting for incineration and watched the frayed remains of the novel she had just read burst into flames. In less than ten minutes, nothing at all was left of Walter's last gift. Except for the message that was even now searing its painful way into her heart.

****

"Hey dad, you trying to cool off the kitchen with the fridge?"

Michael started, and realized he was still standing in front the open refrigerator. He grabbed a beer and closed the door. "No."

"You okay?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, Marie dumped you again two weeks ago."

"Yes."

Michael had run into Marie at a downtown café last autumn, a few months after she had ended their affair. Coffee had led to dinner, dinner had led to sex, and they had fallen back into a relationship that, if did not really satisfy either of them fully, had been comfortable and easy. He had continued to find the conversation as satisfying as the sex, and the sex had still been good. He was as sorry to see it end the second time as he had been the first, even though it had been just as inevitable.

"And you've been staring off into space at all hours of the day ever since." Adam clapped his hand on Michael's shoulder and shook him lightly. "Snap out of it, man!" he said, his voice cracking faintly on the 'man.'

Michael smiled at him, as amazed as always these last few years at how quickly Adam was growing, sometimes, it seemed, almost literally before his very eyes. He had finished eighth grade in the spring, and at fourteen and a half, Adam was now taller than his mother had been. His arms and shoulders had filled out along lines that were much bulkier than Michael had ever anticipated. Adam also needed to shave on a semi-regular basis to control the dark beard that was creeping in along his jaw and down his neck. Much as it pained him to admit it, Michael could see echoes of Sala Vacheck's solid build and heavy beard in his grandson.

Michael said, "Easy for you to say, as you have a girlfriend now."

Adam flushed even as he grinned. "C'mon dad. It hasn't been that long."

"What is it … two months now?"

"Dad!" Adam laughed again. "Almost three! And you know it!"

They walked out onto the deck where their evening burgers were grilling, Michael opening his beer and Adam retrieving his drink from the railing where he had left it.

"So." Adam cleared his throat, "Why did Marie dump you, exactly? You never said."

"She has a semester leave beginning this fall, and she's going to Aix en Provence."

"Yeah. I knew that. So?"

"She wanted me to come."

"To visit?"

"To stay."

"The whole semester?" Adam's eyes opened wide in surprise.

"Yes." Michael turned his attention to the grill, flipping the burgers to cook the other side.

Adam crossed the deck to stand where he could see Michael's face. His voice cracked again when he asked, "What about me?"

"She wanted you to come too, to go to school there."

Adam sank down into one of the deck chairs. "Oh." He shook his head. "Wow."

"I said no."

"What? Why?"

Michael caught his eyes, and made his voice was low and meaningful. "You know why."

Adam glanced around reflexively, and lowered his own voice. "Because I was kidnapped in France."

"Yes."

"Did you tell all that to Marie?"

Michael shook his head. "No."

"Oh man." Adam looked up at Michael, his expression serious. "I'm sorry, dad."

Michael sat down in the chair across from Adam and looked at him curiously. "Why?"

Adam shifted uncomfortably. "Well. If it weren't for me and what happened back then, you could have gone with her."

"You weren't the target then, and you wouldn't be now. It's me who can't go back to France. Not you."

"Really?"

Michael chuckled at the obvious relief on Adam's face. "Really."

"Still. Why didn't you tell her the truth? Marie would've understood."

Michael sighed and sipped his beer. "It wasn't the only reason, not really."

Adam looked his inquiry.

Michael sighed again, and stood up to get their burgers off the grill. Once they had served their plates and were sitting at the table, Michael said, "Marie wanted to get married. And have a baby."

"Oh." Adam ate in silence for a while as he processed the information. At last he asked, "Would that have been so bad?"

Michael looked up, surprised by the apparent sincerity of Adam's question. Adam had moderated his hostility to Marie over time, but it had never appeared to Michael that he actually liked her very much. Michael would have said that the most optimistic description of Adam's feelings for Marie, and Michael's relationship with her, was brutal indifference. "Well, she did not necessarily want to marry me, so much as she wants to marry someone who wants the same things she does."

"No way! She was really into you. I thought?"

"Yes. But, Marie knew I was more ambivalent than she was. I can't marry a woman who doesn't really know who I am. And I certainly can't father a child under those circumstances."

"Why couldn't you just tell her, explain the whole deal?"

"Because." Michael paused to finish his beer. "Because it became clear to me that Marie could not keep secrets. Not secrets like ours. Or," he paused to smile ruefully at Adam, "any secrets, really, as you well know."

"So, you let her dump you. Again. For being a selfish ass who wouldn't change his life for her."

Michael stood to clear the table, laughing to hide the way Adam's comment, a deliberate if sympathetic echo of Marie's parting shot stung. "Yes. Well. That does seem to sum it up."

*******

The summer faded into fall. Adam started high school, made the 'B' soccer team, and just after his fifteenth birthday shot his first deer. Adam's relationship with his girlfriend Tasha had continued to flourish and so, remembering Adam's question while camping a few years earlier, Michael bought a box of condoms and left them on his son's desk that same weekend. Adam's outraged cry of "DAD!" when he found them Sunday evening was a soothing balm to parental concern, but Michael knew that it was only a matter of time at this point before curiosity turned to experimentation. Almost two years earlier, when Adam's intolerable friend Jake had been a regular visitor, he had discovered that he needed to lock down all the home computers to keep porn, and the accompanying spy ware and other assorted garbage off them.

Michael tried to appear sympathetic to the boys' disappointment when Jake's family decided to send him to one of the many 'exclusive' private academies rather than the local public high school, but he was privately thrilled and did all he could to encourage the death of that friendship.

Michael's business continued more or less as before, a little less new construction, a little more painting over what was not being replaced or well repaired during the harder economic times, but the hours were about the same. He went on a few dates, willing to let friends set him up, but he was not looking for a new girlfriend. Instead he sought only to keep from becoming aggressively single again. That some of the women he met were also seeking only occasional companionship proved a pleasant discovery, and he stopped dreading another period of extended and unwelcome celibacy.

That winter Adam joined his high school ski and snowboard team. The season passed in a blur of weekend tournaments and what, to Michael anyway, felt like hundreds of hours of driving in mild to terrible weather balanced by a lot of hours sitting around waiting in damp ski lodges. The upside to the long hours in the car meant a lot of time to talk with Adam. Michael cherished those conversations, learning more each time about the young adult his son was slowly becoming, even as Adam was discovering himself in his own reaction to the news, to school, to books he was reading and subjects he was taking, and to events in competition and in his social circle.

An unexpectedly warm and rainy March brought the ski season to an abrupt end, and Michael and Adam turned their attention to spring hunting. While making plans for turkey season, Adam surprised Michael by expressing a desire to return to martial arts. Not aikido this time, but rather tae kwon do. When Michael asked why, he discovered that Adam had been slowly thinking over their conversation last summer, about Michael's breakup with Marie, and what Adam needed to be able to do to fend for himself in the world. With that opening, Michael suggested instead that he teach Adam the techniques he had learned 'while on the run with Nikita.' At first Adam had been skeptical, but when the magic phrase 'street fighting' slipped into the discussion, he was sold. With sensei's permission they returned to the dojo in the empty late night hours, Michael and Adam both learning what Adam could do with his rapidly maturing frame. Which included occasionally landing blows that really hurt, much to Michael's freshly bruised satisfaction.

Adam finished ninth grade on a high note, earning 'As' in all of his classes and going to the formal spring dance for the ninth and tenth graders with his girlfriend Tasha. For the third summer in a row Adam was working for Michael, now as a crew chief for exterior paint jobs, his real experience and authority buttressed by his glowing physical confidence and general joy at being young, strong and healthy.

****

Nikita parked the rental car on the opposite side of the street and about half way up the block from Michael and Adam's house. She sat and watched the area, hunting for any last warning that she was about to make a terrible mistake. It was a pleasant street, large old shade trees spreading over the neat green lawns and trimmed hedges, broken up by the occasional flaring color of a late summer flower garden. The houses were all from the early twentieth century, on the small side with only two and three bedrooms, though a few were clearly much larger, all set back from old and pitted grey cement sidewalks and with side driveways leading to detached garages set behind the houses. A few bikes and scattered skateboards and other toys indicated that plenty of children lived in the houses, and that summer was in full swing.

A lawn mower started up near by, and she heard music drifting out from open windows. It was just after five o'clock in the afternoon the first Friday of August, and she knew Michael was home because she had spotted his old SUV in the driveway. It had taken her many months to find him, and she had not begun looking until six months after she fled the Section the previous September, as sure as she could be that she was not being tracked. She was still confident that she had walked away unseen and un-followed, but then she knew as well or better than anyone that lulling a target into complaisance was a high success strategy, if you had the time for it.

Several times she had nearly convinced herself to drop the search, to let Michael go, knowing it was the only true guarantee she could offer that she would not lead enemies to his doorstep. Each time she pressed on, reminding herself that he had asked her to find him. That he wanted her to find him. That, even knowing the risks, he wanted her to slip away from the Section and start a new life with him. For that was Walter's last gift: a message from Michael. A message that told her that he was not coming back, that he was happy outside, and that he wanted her to come to him.

Or, at least, she had been certain that this was the message. Now, on the cusp of discovery she was wondering if she was insane to have read so much into a tattered old science fiction novella, where the young protagonists escaped a suffocating life underground to begin a new one in the restored world above.

Which was all a bit late. If she had actually led anyone to his doorstep, driving away now would not make any difference. So, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and got out of the car.

When she walked up the front path she saw the main door was open to allow the afternoon air to circulate through the full-length screen. A sudden, and unwelcome, memory of walking up the path to the house Michael had shared with Elena snuck up to mock her. She reminded herself that everything was different now, beginning with an open door instead of a closed one, and shoved the memory firmly away.

As she drew nearer she could see a dark, wood paneled foyer with a stair headed up to a half way landing before it turned in an L-shape and vanished into the floor above. At the sound of the doorbell two mid-sized black labs rushed out barking from the rear of the house. She heard Michael's voice, ordering the dogs back, before she saw him. When he did appear it was at first only as an achingly familiar outline, a dark shape against the sun streaming in the windows behind him. And then he was there, in front of her, the only thing between them the screen door.

"Hi," She said. "I got your message."

Now that he was standing in daylight, she could see he had a closely trimmed full beard, and his hair was shorter. There was more grey in that hair, and there were more laugh lines around his eyes. His eyes themselves, though, were exactly the same, deep and green, and full of information that he would never share any other way. As he opened the door and drew her inside his home, she saw his shock turn to surprise, then to profound relief, then joy and surging desire, and just before he folded her into his arms, she knew she caught a bright flare of smug satisfaction.

Still holding her tightly, he whispered, "I missed you."

She leaned back in his arms so she could read his face. "But you've been expecting me."

He smiled slowly, brushing his thumbs across her cheeks, sending a cascade of small fireworks skittering across her nerves and making her breathing hitch. He dropped his hands to her shoulders, stroking and touching as though he could not quite believe his eyes and needed the confirmation of his other senses, and his voice was husky and low when he answered, "I've been hoping, not expecting."

"Well." She smiled back. "Here I am."

Michael's expression grew more serious as he asked, "For how long?"

She saw uncertainty warring with hope in his eyes. She put all the force of her conviction into her voice when she said, "For as long as you'll have me."

After a searing beat, his eyes dropped to her lips and he slipped his hand around the back of her neck. Then he bent his head to kiss her, murmuring, "That could be a long time."

Kissing him was everything she had missed, everything she had imagined, everything she had wanted for so many years. He was here, she was here, and they were together. Under her searching hands, his body was as strong and solid as ever. Against her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, his lips were as soft and as demanding. As his hands roamed her back, pulling her close, electricity surged through barely remembered nerves and synapses, and her body felt like it was lighting up like a Christmas tree.

One kind of tension fled even as another, far more exciting and welcome fission of lust boiled up out of her groin and came out as a raw moan from the back of her throat.

Michael drew back to rest his forehead against hers, his heart hammering furiously under her hands. "I go by Mike, here."

"Nicole. Nicole Rennen."

Michael raised his head to give her a quizzical look.

She shrugged. "Lots of blond Norwegians in Minnesota."

Michael was just tilting his head to kiss her again, when they were interrupted by a young man's voice, breaking across the word, "Dad?"

Nikita stepped back and turned to see Adam, for it could only be him, standing in the middle of the living room, slack jawed with surprise. His hair was dark and shiny like his mother's, and he also had her dark eyes and smooth, brown skin, deeply tanned now at the end of the summer. The shape of her cheek and jaw were preserved and made new in her son, though the faintest shadow of a downy dark beard along his chin and over his upper-lip was marginally disconcerting. He was almost as tall as Nikita, and he had his father's broad shoulders and the same well defined muscles in his forearms and his calves.

"Wow." She shook her head in amazement. "I knew how much you would have grown, but seeing you is…. Wow."

Adam blinked and closed his mouth.

Nikita smiled encouragingly. "Adam. It's me, Nikita. Do you remember me at all?" She glanced at Michael, and was a little unnerved to see him in still, observational mode.

"Yeah. A little." Adam thrust his hands in his pockets, shooting a quick, hooded and slightly accusing glance his father's way. "I didn't know you were coming to visit us."

She opened her hands wide and shrugged, saying with a light laugh, "I didn't know either, until the opportunity was here."

Adam looked back at her. "Isn't it kind of dangerous, you bopping into our lives, then out again?"

Nikita glanced at Michael, then back at Adam. "Your dad and I had the same training. I would do nothing to put you in danger now."

"Are you as good as him?" Adam's stare was challenging, but she could see even through his pockets that his fists were tightly clenched, which told her a great deal about the tender places that remained in Adam's psyche.

Michael broke in, to her relief. He stepped up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder, the weight of his palm and strength of his fingers as always both soothing and erotic for Nikita. His voice was calm and sure. "Yes. She is, Adam."

Adam said nothing. So Nikita said, "it is really good to see you. You look – great." She glanced back at Michael again, but his profile offered no clues. "You and your dad, both."

Adam said nothing, so she plunged on. "And I love your trousers."

She did, too. Adam was wearing a pair of plaid, skater-style trousers, green and black stripes on a white background, long and skinny and snug without being too tight, and a black tee shirt with what seemed to be some sort of space ship themed design.

Adam flushed a little and said, "uh. Thanks."

Then Nikita was out of ideas. Fortunately, Michael broke the awkward silence that settled in after that. "We have a lot to catch up on, but tonight we're off to a friend's house for supper, and we're already going to be late. Friday afternoon traffic in the summer is always bad."

Nikita caught Michael's arm as she looked inquiringly at him. "I can stay here and we can talk later."

Michael was already turning for the front door, which he closed and locked. "No."

He put his hand on the small of her back and steered her through the living room to the dining room to the kitchen, gesturing for Adam to precede them. "It's a big group tonight. One more will be no problem."

Adam and Nikita both started to protest, but Michael overrode them, herded them into the SUV, and had them headed for the party before either of them managed to do more than stammer, interrupt one another, apologize, and stammer again.


	2. Chapter 2

"Wow." Charlie said, again. Completely unnecessarily in Adam's view, given that Charlie had said little else since his dad had walked in with Nikita at his side.

"Wow. She is _hot_."

Adam punched Charlie's shoulder. Not as hard as he could have, but plenty hard enough to get Charlie to quit drooling in Nikita's direction and finally look at Adam.

"She's old enough to be your mom, dude."

"MILF, man. Total MILF."

Adam rolled his eyes and gagged. "You are gross."

"Man. Your dad is one lucky A-hole."

Adam swung Charlie completely around, so Nikita was no longer in his field of vision. "Jesus Christ, dude. Leave it alone."

Charlie blinked, and seemed to focus on Adam for the first time. "What's wrong man?"

"Nothing. Everything. Nik–" he stumbled over her new name, "Nicole is here."

"Who is she?"

"Dad's old girlfriend. From before we came to Minnesota."

"Old girlfriend?" Charlie snorted. "There hasn't hardly been daylight between them since they walked in."

Adam grunted. Because it was almost true. His dad and Nikita weren't, thank God, groping each other or anything like that. In fact, it was kind of the opposite, really. But they stayed pretty close most of the time, just brushing up against each other because apparently not touching was impossible for them, and there was this, this vibe between them and around them that practically made the hair on his arms stand up. When their glances locked, the intensity of their focus on each other made his palms hot and his toes curl. He and Charlie were not the only people who were affected by it either. He could see the way other people eased around them rather than walk between them, even when there was space to do so. He couldn't decide if he wanted to just die of embarrassment, or run screaming into the road.

Charlie went on, "it was never like that with Marie." He turned to Adam again, "Or was it?" Charlie frowned, as if he were suddenly unsure and doubting his own senses and his own memory.

Adam knew he doubted his own senses right about now. He shook his head. "I don't think so." He shrugged. "I don't know. It's been, like, a year, since that ended."

He shook his head again, trying to clear out the fog that seemed to have rolled in the moment he walked into the living room to find his dad locked in a pulse-pounding tongue-duel with Nikita. "Come on. Let's get out of here. Go play hoops or something."

******

When Michael first saw Nikita standing on his front porch, his whole world splintered and then, between one step and the next, remade itself. He thought later that maybe that's what it always felt like, a shattering and a re-knitting, to pass the boundary between one life and another, the one without Nikita, and the one with her.

She was so vibrantly alive. He had not really understood just how much he had feared she was dead until he saw her, until he reached to take her hand and felt the solid reality of her skin and bones under his fingers. Along with his near overwhelming relief, he felt lightheaded; almost drunk on a crazy euphoria building fast on one part joy and two parts pride. She had understood the message he had sent through Walter. With nothing but her memories and knowledge of him, she had found him. Despite all the years and all the pain and all that might have given her good reason to stay away forever, she had accepted the risk and seized their chance. He had wanted nothing more than to pull her up to his room so he could show her how much he had missed her, how much he wanted her, how very glad he was she was there. He still wanted nothing more than to take her home and make love to her until dawn, and then do it all over again.

It was proving impossible for him to stand close to her, or, really, even be in the same room with her and not give in to the need to touch her again, however briefly, just to confirm that she was really here, and he was not dreaming.

Of course, his dream would not have included his sulky fifteen-year-old son shooting accusing and disgusted looks at him whenever he chanced by, and his dream would have included Nikita scandalizing all his nice, non-demonstrative Minnesotan friends by flirting with him as seductively and erotically as possible without actually stripping and fucking on the spot. Or possibly, it might have included that too. So, he was reasonably certain he was not dreaming. Adam was putting on an excellent performance of being-deeply-embarrassed-by-my-parent with a subplot of how-could-you-do-this-to-me, and Nikita was, as usual, doing an excellent job of adapting herself to the situation she found herself in. She was presenting herself as a believably solid, non-threatening, middle-class professional woman. The only erotic element of her behavior was in her eyes. Every now and then he would look up to find her watching him, and the heat and desire he read there made his breath catch and his step falter.

He did wonder, when she was occasionally out of sight, even as he thrilled to know she had come to him when he asked, how long she would really want to be, or could be, part of the small, sheltered life he had made for Adam. He wondered too, how long that life would last, now that she was really here.

Of course, bringing her to this cookout tonight was a test, of a sort. They didn't have to come. He could have called and canceled. But he did not call. He wanted to see how she would respond to a piece of the world he and Adam had made. However unfair it might have been to toss her into the midst of the dense web that bounded their lives without giving her more than the quickest rundown on the drive over about who she would be meeting, she was passing brilliantly. Not that it proved anything. As Madeline had noted long ago, Nikita was an excellent actress.

Even now she was chatting with Charlie's mom Shelia and a few of the other guests, laughing easily at their jokes and so gently deflecting their more probing questions with an easy, natural explanation for her sudden arrival in Michael's life that he knew little more would ever have to said to explain it all. "The company I was working for merged with another and my job became 'redundant'." She drawled the word to understanding and sympathetic chuckles all around. She went on, "I took all my accrued time and a years' salary and called Mike, to ask if his old offer of a place to stay and think was still good. He said yes, so, here I am."

"So… you two have known each other for a long time?" Shelia asked.

Nikita smiled at Michael, who had joined the little group. She wound her arm around his to take his hand, leaving a hot, aching trail on his skin as she did so, and said, "Yeah. Mike was my first boss, at my first job."

"What are you going to do now?" one of the other women asked.

"I have no idea." Nikita turned to look at her, without letting go of Michael's hand, and smiled her most charming smile. "By the end I pretty much detested what I was doing. I don't want to be in systems' management any longer. Mike ditching it all and moving to a new place where he could live the kind of life he wanted was pretty inspirational, so, now I'm taking some time to figure out what I do want."

"Other than Mike," said Shelia, her raised eyebrow offset by a warm smile.

Nikita flushed and ducked her chin in a show of mild embarrassment. Looking up again, she caught Michael's gaze as she answered, as much to him as to Shelia and the others. He had spent what seemed a lifetime learning how to read those blue depths, and he knew she was absolutely certain and completely sincere when she said, "Yeah. Mike. I do want a life with Mike. That's true."

It was the only time he kissed her at the party.

Driving home in the car, Michael said to Adam, "Nicole is going to be staying with us."

Adam grunted, "Yeah. I figured."

Michael glanced up to the rearview mirror to see Adam slumped in the back seat, staring morosely out the window as they made their way through the nighttime city, his face lit by cool neon flashes as they passed under street lights and past strip malls.

Michael caught Nikita's eye, and clarified, "with me."

Adam snorted harshly. "No shit. Like everyone at the Petersen's tonight hasn't already figured _that_ out."

Michael exchanged a quick glance with Nikita. Her expression was a bit rueful, a bit resigned and a lot heated. A wave of lust ran fanned out from his belly to his extremities and he wrestled down the desire to pull off the road and kiss her. He said, to Adam's reflection, "What can I do, to help make this easier for you?"

Adam shrugged. "Nothing, Dad. It's done."

Michael was sure Nikita heard the resentment in Adam's voice as clearly as he did. "Adam. Please."

Adam was silent for what felt to Michael like an eternity, still slumped and sullen every time Michael glanced at him through the mirror. As they turned off the interstate to head for their neighborhood, Michael glanced up when he heard Adam clear his throat. Adam sat up and straightened his back, a calculating look spreading across his face. "Okay." Adam said. "If you're really serious. I want a bedroom in the basement. So I don't have to be across the hall."

Michael nodded in relief even as he decided to ignore the insinuation that his bedroom, with Nikita in it, had apparently taken on the aura of an especially fetid bog. He and Adam had talked about the possibility of Adam moving to the basement before, when Michael was still dating Marie and she was over at the house regularly. But, after that relationship ended, their vague remodeling plans had been dropped. Picking them back up again would be relatively simple. He knew that this would not make all the adjustment issues go away, but it was a good start. "Okay. I can't do that tonight. But we can begin next week."

"For real, this time?"

The spiteful undercurrent in Adam's voice was a clear warning, but Michael chose to set it aside for now. He had caught Nikita's raised brow and knew he would be telling her all about Marie much sooner than later. He smiled at Nikita in acknowledgement even as he answered Adam with a firm promise. "For real."

*****

When they reached the house, Adam raced up the stairs to the only bathroom, so Nikita took the opportunity to move her rental car into the driveway while Michael let the dogs out. When she came in with her bag, Adam was still showering.

Michael was standing in the middle of the kitchen, just waiting for her. She dropped her bag by the door and walked into his embrace, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as she leaned in to kiss him, a long, wet, opened mouthed kiss, the kind she had been fantasizing about for the last three hours. She was so ready for his touch she moaned nearly the instant he slid his hands up and under her loose sweater to cup her breasts, his thumbs brushing firmly over her already painfully taut nipples before he pinched them through her tank top, gently and then harder as he pulled and twisted. She arched her back to push herself more firmly into his hands, her fingers raking into his hair as he bent his head to scrape his teeth along her neck. She thought she might come before he even opened her jeans.

As though he had heard her thoughts, he pressed her a step back and then another, until he trapped her against the counter. He opened her legs wider with his knee, pushing closer even as he undid the top button and dragged down the zipper of her pants, slipping his fingers inside the top of her panties, just brushing the skin. She twisted hard against his hands, pulling on his shoulders and rising up on her toes as she tried to rock her wet, aching clit against his teasing fingers. She felt him smile against her neck and then he pulled his hands free to brush up under her tank, scraping his nails lightly over her skin. She shivered as he rubbed his beard against her cheek and down her neck. She had thought it might be rough or bristly, the way his stubble had so often been, when he had avoided shaving, but his beard was softer, finer and more ticklish than she expected and she couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up. When he started to pull away she locked her arms around his back, her hands high between his shoulder blades keeping him close.

He obediently dropped his face back to her neck, stroking and rubbing against all her exposed skin and making her think of a large, dangerous cat. He kissed her again, and his breath tasted faintly like the wine he had been drinking. His beard and skin smelled of charcoal smoke, grilled food and soap, overlaying a more essential scent that sent her heart hammering as memories collided with intense reality of the here and the now. She stroked her hands down the long lines of muscle in his back to grip his ass and pull him closer, grinding her hips against the heavy, hard length of his erection. When he pushed his fingers back inside her panties he didn't stop to tease, moving on until he was pressing one and then two fingertips just far enough inside her to make them slick and smooth as he stroked back up and around. She thought she was going to burn up or explode. She was afraid she was going to end up fucking him on his kitchen floor before they'd had a chance to say what needed to be said first.

The noise of Adam leaving the bathroom startled them still. Adam's tread was heavy and loud across the creaking old floor above their heads, and then he must have entered his own room because they next sound was his bedroom door slamming closed. Within seconds she heard the jangling notes of a popular song. The music was not blasting out of his room, but was definitely loud enough to drown out any unwelcome noises, while also serving as a constant reminder of his presence.

Michael pulled away from her, and they shared a quick, rueful smile. Nikita refastened her jeans and asked, "How awkward will this be? Should I go to a hotel for a while?"

"No."

She frowned at him. "No, it won't be awkward, or, no, I shouldn't get a hotel room?"

He brushed his fingers, the ones that smelled like her, across her lips. "Don't go to a hotel."

Nikita stood up straighter, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him.

He sighed and dropped his hand. "Yes. It will be awkward. Whenever you begin to sleep here."

"Can you really give him a room in the basement?"

Michael nodded as he stroked her shoulder with gentle fingers. "Build one for him. The basement is unfinished right now."

"Will that solve the problem?"

He looked down at his hand, as if smoothing her hair along her arm were the most important task the whole world. "No." He glanced up from under his brows and smiled, even as he shifted back into her and drew his fingers up her thigh, making her want to grind her hips into his again. She made herself stand still. He went on, "But it will make it much better."

She searched his face, and she let her sudden flare of uncertainty show in her voice. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

His only answer was to raise his hands to her face and hold her head still as he kissed her, hard and long.

Nikita was already naked and under the sheet when Michael came in to his bedroom, dropping his shirt and shoes in the chair by the door, which he shut firmly behind him. Adam's music was loud enough that she didn't bother to say anything until Michael had slipped under the sheet beside her, his heat reaching her even before his hand slid over her stomach. That's when she held up the condom packs she had ready in her hand. "I brought supplies."

He cocked his head. "Worried about where I've been?"

"No." She mock frowned at him. "Should I be?" She tapped his shoulder with the condoms. "Anyway. No. Contraception. I've been off all hormonal birth control for quite a while."

He said nothing, waiting for her to explain.

Nikita opened her mouth to clarify, but found the words of her prepared speech unexpectedly difficult to form. Michael just waited, his gaze warm and steady on hers, drawing an idle pattern on her belly with his fingers that made her shiver, and want to push his hand lower or tug it higher.

She reminded herself, again, that this was important and had to be said before things went any further. "I want our dream back. I want the life you offered me. Before. I want to be part of a family, with a house and dogs, and children of my own. Children of our own."

He reached up and pulled the condoms out of her hand. "Then why use these?"

Her heart leapt to her mouth, but she forced herself to speak anyway, "You have to have the same dream. You have to want it too."

He smiled as he half slid, half reached over her to set the condoms on the bedside table. Pressing her into the mattress, his cock hard and hot against her hip, the tip already wet and sticky, his lips hovering over hers, he murmured, "I want it too."

She put her hands on his chest, not really pushing him away but holding him back enough she could see his face. "You don't have to decide tonight. We can talk about it, decide later."

His gaze was very earnest and open as he looked straight at her. "Do you love me?"

"Yes." She brought her hands up and traced his face with her fingertips, knowing the words were important, knowing they were true. "Oh yes. I love you."

He kissed her fingers, and then looked her in the eye. "Then I'm sure."

She had worried sometimes, in the dark of the night, during all the months between leaving the Section and now, that the reality of being reunited with Michael would fail to match her fervid memories or her most erotic dreams. In the flickering candlelight of his bedroom, though, she learned that her memories had faded, or her dreaming was stunted, because being with Michael now was like the first time all over again, only even better for experience and knowledge, of herself and of him. Every touch, every kiss, every murmured suggestion evoked in her a ferocious and seemingly insatiable need for more of him, his touch, his kiss, his heat, his cock. She pulled him closer, tighter, deeper, harder, and when her first orgasm finally exploded she actually thought she saw stars swimming in the edge of her eyes.

As for Michael, he seemed to her like a starving man at last at the feast. Sleep, when it came, long after the night sky had begun to brighten with the coming dawn, was merely a lull before the deep hunger so long denied roused them both, and drove him back into her arms.

*****

Michael stroked the damp lock of hair off Nikita's forehead, pushed it behind her ear, and then combed softly through the tangled strands as he smoothed her hair against her shoulder blade. Her hair was long again, falling to brush against the middle of her back, and very blond, with some streaks that were almost white, and she had a sea of freckles dotting her shoulders and her chest and her back. He smiled a little as he wondered how much time she had spent drifting from beach to beach before she came looking for him. She closed her eyes and purred deep in her throat. He said, "I slipped, a few years ago, and Adam knows a little about us."

Nikita was quiet for a moment or two; he watched the long rise and fall of her breathing and admired again the feel of her muscles under her skin while he stroked her back and waited for her to speak. When she opened her eyes, her expression was sad. "That you and I were lovers. While you were with his mom."

Michael nodded. "And after as well."

She sighed, and her voice was sad too. "And that made him angry, for his mom's sake."

He shook his head. "In part, yes. But also for his own. I think he feels that I left him to be with you."

She sniffed, short and sharp. "Not bloody likely."

"It wasn't a contest."

Nikita smiled, and he was reassured, though he had not known he wanted to be, as she rolled fully onto her side and wrapped her ankle around his and slid her hand across his hip. "I know."

He looked at her very carefully. "Do you?"

"Yes. I really do." She pulled his chin down so he would look straight into her eyes and declared, "I would have loved you less if you hadn't put his needs first."

Michael wondered how Adam might feel if he ever realized that one large part of the reason he had taken him and fled Europe was so he could live up to Nikita's faith in him. That he had aimed to become the man and father Nikita so desperately wanted, even needed him to be. He bent his head to kiss her again, but she forestalled him with her fingers against his lips.

"Michael." Her face was serious. "I have to pee. And I'm starving."

He grinned at her. "Then, let's have breakfast."

Her kiss was a promise, then she swung her legs out of the bed and reached for her clothes.

Adam's door was still closed when Michael went down to the kitchen, but he had hardly started the coffee when Adam appeared in the doorway, dressed for the day and holding a couple of pads of paper.

"I've got the sketches we did before. I think they're cool. I think we should use them."

Michael nodded. "Me too. Only," he caught Adam's eye, "I think we should include a bathroom of your own as well."

"Are you serious?"

Michael grinned. "Yeah."

Adam nodded enthusiastically. "That would be awesome."

"Take a look at the sketch again and think about a bathroom as part of the plan." Michael turned for the refrigerator. "What would you like for breakfast?"

******

When Nikita entered the kitchen after a shower that had been longer than she intended, she saw Adam and Michael had already eaten their breakfasts and had their heads bent over the papers that scattered the surface of the small kitchen table. Nikita looked over their shoulders as she scooped up their plates to take them to the sink. "Plans for the basement?"

"Yes." Michael answered. "Let me get you some breakfast." He started to get up, but she waved him back down.

"I'll get it." She caught Adam watching her, so she said, "can I see what you've got?"

Adam shrugged, and gave her a somewhat grudging, "sure."

She looked again at the sketches. "A bathroom too. That's great." She started to make a suggestion, but thought better of it and turned to the stove and the eggs and bread and cheese Michael had left out on the counter for her.

Michael offered, "Nicole used to regularly remodel her apartments."

"Used to?" Nikita smiled. "I never stopped." She caught Michael's eye and winked. "Always good to have a reason to rip out the walls, see what's inside."

"There aren't any walls in the basement right now." Adam's tone was quelling. "Nothing to rip out."

"That's okay. I can start with the walls up here."

Adam squawked, "what?"

Nikita laughed. "Joke! I'm kidding. You guys have a great house. I wouldn't change anything."

She knew even as she said it, it wasn't really true. She was changing everything just by being here, and in a more literal way, she had already started a list of things to actually change. Like Michael's antique iron bed-frame, which she wanted him to trade for something different. It was charming but had already proven too small and too awkward, and she had fresh bruises to prove it and so did Michael. But she said it and meant it, because their house was nice. It was very masculine, lots of greens and browns and soft leather upholstery, but attractive and homey.

Adam glowered from under his brows. "Well, when your stuff gets here, that'll change everything."

"Adam." She waited for him to look up at her. "I walked away from everything I had. I made a clean break. I took nothing. Just like you and your dad did. All I have in the world right now, in terms of stuff, is one small bag and the rental car." She caught Michael's eye. "Speaking of which, I should turn it in soon."

"We can return it today, but you'll need a car of your own."

"I have some cash." This was a lie. She had a lot of cash. "I was thinking of buying a used car, one of the smaller SUV's maybe."

"Ok. Adam?" Michael turned to look at his son. "Want to go car shopping?"

"With you guys?" Adam made a disgusted face. "Thanks. But no." He stood up and gathered their drawings. To the papers in his hand he said, "Guess we aren't going sailing today."

Nikita admired the way Adam let just the tiniest hint of a resentful pout creep onto his lips as he shot his father a disappointed glance. Which helped, a little, to offset the sting she felt at his obvious hostility to spending time with her.

"We can still go sailing, just a little later." Michael replied.

"I wanted to go to Jake's party tonight, remember?"

Michael stood up too. "Okay. Let's all go to the marina now. We can show Nicole the boat and go out for an hour or two. We can deal with the cars tomorrow, or early next week."

Adam grimaced. "That's okay. I don't think I'm up for sailing today after all. I think I'll call around and hook up with the guys. Can you drop me off on the way to return her car?"

Nikita reminded herself that she had withstood far, far worse than a sour attitude from a spoiled fifteen year old, even if she could not exactly recall what, just at that very precise moment.


	3. Chapter 3

Three weeks after her arrival in Minnesota, Nikita stepped into their bedroom and closed the door behind her, pushing it until the latch clicked. At the sound, Michael looked up from getting dressed. She tossed him the positive pregnancy stick, which he caught effortlessly. She said, "good work."

He examined the little stick for a second or two, and then he set it down on the dresser and looked up at her. His eyes were bright with pleasure and his full lips were quirking into a smile, but what he said was, "your arrival was well timed."

Nikita laughed then, feeling light with happiness, and crossed the room to step into his open arms. "Fertility Awareness Method. I knew I was going to ovulate about two days after I got here. It's all the rage in the pre-pregnant sites on the internet."

He hugged her tight, which was more reassuring than anything he could have said. "Still, first time?"

"I know." She kissed him, hard. "I was telling myself not to panic even if it took a year, or never at all."

He put his hands on the sides of her face, examining her carefully. "Would that have been so horrible?"

She planted a kiss on his palm before laying his hand against her cheek. This was another thing she had thought about often, in the dark of the night. "It would have been hard, after everything, to let go of that dream." She caught his eye again. "But, you and I? We're survivors, Michael. We would have come through it."

"I'm sorry Adam has—"

She kissed him again, cutting him off. "He has had you entirely to himself for a long time. I expected it to be difficult."

She had also been foolish enough to hope it would not be as difficult as it was proving to be, that the open and loving little boy of her memory would be willing to love her still, but any disappointment was her own fault, and she knew it. In any case, she thought she was making some headway in earning Adam's friendship now.

She was overseeing the work on the basement remodeling. Michael had called in a number of favors, and laid out markers for more, to get their project squeezed to the top of the schedule for all the different tradesmen required, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. But Michael went to work each day with Adam, and then Adam was at soccer practice all afternoon, every afternoon, leaving Nikita in charge at the house. This meant that each evening, she was the one who led Adam through the day's progress, and she believed that the pleasure he shared with her as his new bedroom took shape was genuine.

The work was going quickly enough that they hoped that his bedroom, at least, if not the bathroom, would be ready for him to move into before the first day of the school year, which was in another week.

The project had also grown, as remodeling projects are wont to do, and they were finishing off the entire basement, not just a bedroom and bathroom. One thing had led to another. The tiny kitchen table was barely big enough for three people at breakfast and there was no room for a bigger one, but laptops, a printer and the stacks of miscellaneous paper that cluttered Adam and Michael's lives had long ago swallowed the dining room table. To reclaim that for eating, Michael needed a new work area. Adam suggested his room, but Nikita had been quick to propose a basement office instead and Michael as quickly agreed. Before Adam could ask any probing questions about the fate of his not-quite-old bedroom, Nikita had elaborated the office into an office/den/basement entertainment area – and the prospect of the gaming TV and consoles having their own permanent, glare-free home was too delicious for Adam to waste any more time talking about such dull issues as an empty upstairs bedroom.

Nikita also believed that she had scored points with Adam in her choice of a car. As things had worked out, she and Michael had not managed to go car shopping until one day after work during her first week in St. Paul. Adam ended up coming with them after all, lured by the promise of dinner at a favorite restaurant. As they walked through lines of 'lightly-used' small SUVs, Adam kept glancing at smaller, sportier cars. That was out of the question for a number of reasons, but after watching him she realized part of the attraction was he wanted to drive a manual shift. He had been driving with his dad on a learner's permit for almost three months, anxiously waiting for his sixteenth birthday and his provisional driver's license. Michael's SUV was an automatic and a couple of comments later, Nikita understood that Adam regarded manual transmissions with all the fascination an inexperienced fifteen year old who had watched _The Fast and the Furious_ too many times could muster. After a quick, non-verbal exchange with Michael, she switched to looking at various four-wheel drive station wagons and hybrids, with manual shifts. The one she picked out was a boring and respectable dark blue, but at least had leather seats and an mp3 player jack; and it had a manual transmission.

Nikita was taking Adam out by herself to teach him how to use the gearshift and the clutch, and so she thought she was earning Adam's approval for that as well. She had definitely earned his praise for her music collection. He had been quite surprised to learn that Michael had taught Nikita how to drive a car, though, and she had to scramble fast when she realized that Michael had not made it clear to Adam just how long she and Michael had known each other. After that she kept an even more careful guard against any stray references to her past with Michael, which turned out to be easier than she anticipated as Adam ostentatiously refused to ask her any questions about herself or her history.

However, each step forward seemed to bring a half step, or more, back. In general Adam was as soft spoken and polite as Michael, which was hardly surprising. So, with the exception of an unusual slip followed by an intense confrontation with his father in the privacy of the backyard, he was not openly rude to her. But he could, and did, seize on any chance to freeze her out from inserting herself into any activity that he was used to enjoying exclusively with Michael. As this meant, more or less, anything and everything they did together, up to and including work, there had been a lot of evenings when Adam had proposed something, had her and Michael take him up on the idea, only to have Adam change his mind due to obvious disappointment that Nikita would be included. Nights like that he usually left the house with his neighborhood friends or retreated to his room and his ever-louder music. Sometimes Nikita urged Michael to go with Adam and leave her home alone, but, predictably, that never really satisfied anyone either.

Adam could also be clever about finding ways to block her out. That first weekend he had managed to work the conversation around to religious faith, and when she told him in response to a direct question that she was an atheist, he triumphantly announced that in that case, she could not possibly want to join their Catholic parish. Which, in many ways, was quite true. But she was determined to respect their participation in whatever community they had created for themselves. However, Michael intervened at that point and mildly told Adam that he, Michael, was also an atheist and that he had been one for all of his adult life. To which Adam had said, "Fine! Take her side!" and flung himself out of the room.

She did not join them for Sunday mass, that week or in the three weeks since.

When she had expressed enthusiasm for sailing with them, saying to Michael, "I've really missed sailing. I haven't been since you left," Adam started dramatically, stared at his father, and then exclaimed, "Oh my God! You bought the boat because of her, didn't you?!" and then, flung himself out of the room.

The second weekend after her arrival, she had suggested going out to hear some live music, she had been reading about the Minneapolis music scene and was interested in checking it out. Adam curled his lip and assured them he had better things to do. But, at breakfast the next day when he realized they had gone to a couple of bars in the heart of the new music district and heard some locally popular bands, he scowled, pouted, declared, "I didn't know you were going to hear cool music! Thanks for telling me!" and, yes, flung himself out of the room.

He would not even discuss going to the dojo with them, merely staring in mute horror before fleeing.

So, she and Michael went sailing, went out to hear music, and went to the dojo without Adam.

Which was great for her and Michael. It gave them time to reconnect, to fill in all that had happened during their years apart, to enjoy being in a place and time where they did not have to shield their love or hide their affection. It also gave them the opportunity to remember what irked them. Michael refused, for the most part, to talk about how he felt about Adam's behavior, preferring to stew in frustrated irritation and guilt. Her impulse to defend Adam on the few occasions that Michael did make a critical comment earned her narrowed eyes and abrupt changes of subject.

As a result, it was easy for them to agree to say nothing to Adam about her pregnancy until they were sure all was going well, and after Adam had had more time to come to terms with the first round of changes in his life.

*****

Adam moved into his new bedroom the weekend before tenth grade started. It still smelled of new carpet and new paint despite the new window opened wide, but the smell faded in the reality of the total awesomeness of his new space. The walls were a bright clear blue, setting off the light blond wood finish of the new furniture, and his framed prints and posters that filed the walls. He hadn't thought frames were necessary, but Nikita had pushed him into it by taking one of his favorites to be framed while he was at work, and it did look really good. The flexible-track lighting Nikita had found was way cool too, and even the twisted-wire mobile he had grudgingly accepted from Nikita as a gift looked really sharp, spinning lightly in the breeze from the open window.

It was a huge relief to crawl into his new bed that night without his music blaring. He didn't really like extra noise at night, it made it hard for him to sleep, but knowing his dad and Nikita were fucking like crazed monkeys right across the hall and the horror that he might hear something, anything, of that had been enough to keep the music on.

Now he could listen to the familiar quiet night noises he preferred. The wind in the pine trees in the backyard, the tree frogs, the odd call from a night bird, the sound of the dogs nails' clicking on the vinyl floor as they moved around the kitchen where they slept, these were the sounds that comforted him and made him feel safe.

Because he finally had some peace and quiet, here in his new room, he could review the dizzying changes of the last month. First of all, having the hottest older woman he had ever seen in real life show up and move in to his very own home with no warning at all was one of the most disorienting things he had ever experienced, not excluding the hazily remembered months after his mother's death, or the terror and confusion of his kidnapping.

It also explained why his dad had not really been all that broken-up about Marie dumping him, either time. Marie was nice enough and all, and pretty in a geeky way, but, man, she had nothing on Nikita.

Nikita was tall, as tall as his dad and, to his total irritation, slightly taller than Adam was, and slim and blond and ripped. He had watched her come in from a run and drop and do four sets each of fifty crunches and fifty pushups, all with barely a change in her breathing. He had the strongest feeling that if he did go to one of their late night sessions at the dojo, Nikita would kick his ass, no problem. He wasn't ready for that, so he wasn't going.

All that was hard enough, but worst, without doubt, was the pheromones flying around the house. Nikita and his dad stank of sex. Not really literally, of course, his dad was too polite for anything like that, and Nikita was way careful around him too. But metaphorically, oh man, they did. As a result, he had what felt like a constant semi-hard-on whenever he was with them, or knew they were anywhere near by, doing all that they did when they thought he wasn't watching. Which was sometimes true, and sometimes not.

It was making him twitchy and short tempered. He had jerked off so much just to keep some ability to control himself the rest of the time that he was sure he had damn near strained his elbow. If his girlfriend Tasha had been in town, there might have been other kinds of relief available, but she was away with her family until school started. He and Tasha had started having sex in the spring, but once school closed for the summer and he spent most of his time with his dad, he and Tasha had a lot of trouble finding a time and place to get naked. They had had to settle for a lot of making out in cars belonging to friends.

Adam also knew that his dad and Nikita loved each other. Any fool could see it. It was in everything they did; the way they checked in with each other about everything, they way they talked without words, they way they touched just the tips of each other's fingers when other people were around in a really sweet, if utter fail, attempt to keep people from imagining them doing the nasty, in the smiles they exchanged, in the way their faces softened when they watched each other work around the house.

He knew, in his head, that he was glad for his dad. His dad had always been a solitary kind of guy, even when he had a steady girlfriend in Marie, and Adam had always seen it, known it, and felt a little guilty for being the cause of his dad walking out on whatever life he'd had, before. His dad was a cool guy, and he deserved a shot at being in love with a gorgeous woman who loved him back. And Nikita was cool, too. As cool as his dad, even. Too cool for comfort really.

In his heart, though, Adam could not let go of the knowledge that Nikita was the other woman, the woman his dad had chosen over his mom, Elena, and even over Adam himself. That his mom had been dead for almost ten years and he could barely remember her somehow did not matter at all. He remembered his mother's tears, and he remembered the months of loneliness between her death and his dad's re-appearance, and he thought he might hate them for what they did. Even when he knew that they hadn't really done it at all, the terrorists had.

All together, he was really glad to have his own room in the basement, as far away from them as he could get in this small house.

****

Adam cleared his throat, remembered his courage, and said, "So, um, dad. How long is Nicole going to stay with us?"

His father finished the edging stroke he was working on before he turned to face Adam. They were painting a dining room in a fancy condo in one of the downtown neighborhoods. School started the next day, but his dad was short handed again because the college students had all left for the fall term already, so Adam was helping him out this morning.

"Why do you ask?"

What Adam thought of saying was that he might actually hate Nikita, unfair as it was, for coming and messing up his life, and that he wanted her gone, like, yesterday. What he said was, "dad."

His father's lips twitched into the smallest of smiles. "Okay." His dad's expression grew serious. "We don't have a formal plan or agreement. But, Nicole and I, we have been waiting a long time to be together. I hope to be with her for the rest of my life."

"Just like that."

"It's not 'just like that.' It's the result of years of thinking and planning."

"I wasn't part of all that."

"You were a child. And it wasn't about you."

"So, my opinion doesn't matter, at all?"

"Your opinion? No." The casual way his dad dismissed him was infuriating.

Before Adam could say anything, though, his dad went on. "Your safety was everything. It still is. But your opinion of my relationship with Nicole was not relevant."

Adam also hated the way his dad was always so careful to use her new name, and got really pissy about it if Adam ever forgot.

His dad shrugged. "I had hoped you would not be so hostile. When you were small, you seemed to like her a lot. She really likes you." His dad's expression flickered from serious to sharp and disapproving. "Even now, when you're not giving her much reason to."

"She's not my mom."

"No." His dad's brows drew together in a frown. "I wasn't aware that she has tried to be."

She hadn't and Adam knew it, but he plunged on anyway. "And I don't have to do what she says."

The sharpness in his dad's eyes turned fierce and, somehow at the same time, terrifying. "If our safety, if your safety is ever at stake, you will do exactly as she tells you. Without question or hesitation."

Adam felt his jaw drop in shock at his father's intensity. Before he could gather his suddenly scattered wits, his dad went on.

"Short of that," and here his dad smiled quickly and, Adam was certain, the expression in his eyes turned faintly mocking, "I can't imagine that she would be so foolish as to tell you to do anything at all."

Adam could not think of a single response that did not make him sound, and feel, like a thwarted eleven year old, so after a beat or two, he turned back to his paint tray. He said aloud, "I'm going to Tasha's for dinner tonight." And made a note to himself to call Tasha and arrange it as soon as he could.

******

"Want to drive?" Nikita held up the car keys and smiled at Adam as the four of them, Adam, Adam's girlfriend Tasha, Nikita, and Michael walked out of the restaurant and into the afternoon sunshine.

Adam's face lit up. "Really?"

"Got your permit with you?"

"Yep!"

"Catch."

Nikita tossed Adam the keys, then turned to catch Michael's eye and grinned happily at him. Michael smiled back, swallowing his flicker of resentment that she should have made the offer to Adam without checking with him first. He told himself, again, that he wanted Nikita and Adam's relationship to develop into something strong and positive for both of them. That he wanted their relationship to exist independently of him, Michael. That he didn't want to be the only thing that allowed them to be in the same space willingly. He reminded himself that the most exhausting aspect of dating Marie had been being stuck in the position of mediator between two antagonistic parties.

So, he had almost succeeded in beating down the resentment when they got to Nikita's car and he realized that Adam and Nikita both assumed he would ride in the backseat with Tasha. He was reduced to shaming himself into a smile by pointing out to himself that he was reacting like a moody adolescent. For example, like the one who was currently grinning like a madman as he settled into the driver's seat and began conscientiously and self-consciously adjusting the seat and the mirrors.

Adam only stalled the car out once, when he first put it in gear, and after that, while he was a bit jerky moving from a stop into first gear at stoplights and stop signs, he drove pretty well. Michael still wasn't sure he would have judged Adam ready to handle so many passengers and a manual shift at the same time, but he was prepared to acknowledge that he might be more cautious than was really necessary.

He glanced over at Tasha. Knowing she would be sixteen a few months after Adam, he asked, "Have you started driving too?"

She flashed him a nervous smile. "A little. In the country this summer."

Tasha dropped her eyes, probably hoping he would not ask her any more questions. She was always like that, nervous and uncomfortable around him. He, of course, knew at least a dozen different ways to get a very young woman's attention, but none of them were remotely parental in approach or intent and he was appalled that he even remembered what they were when he was around her.

He had given up expecting that she would get less nervous around him after she and Adam had been seeing each other for several months without any change, but he was hoping that with Nikita in the mix, Tasha might, finally, relax enough so that he could figure out what Adam liked about her. Not that she was unlikable, exactly, just that in his presence she was usually so tongue tied that she appeared to have no personality at all. Adam claimed she was funny and bright and a good student, and she was a pretty girl, small and curvy with dark curly hair and pink cheeks. He thought in another time and place she probably would have been a cheerleader, but instead she was on the tennis team. Adam had dragged him to one of her matches last spring, and as a result, Michael had observed that she was an intensely focused competitor, and that she really liked to win.

Over their late lunch after Adam's soccer game, Nikita had managed to finally draw Tasha out by talking about the relative merits of various celebrity-designer fashion lines, beginning with tennis star Serena Williams's. This had the effect of making Adam beam with pleasure, and he did everything he could to keep the conversational ball rolling. Michael, on the other hand, had been left out of the conversation entirely as he had no interest in tennis and no intention of revealing that he actually did know about several of the fashion lines in question, and had firm opinions about them. That would be to break character in every conceivable way. So, he was left to watch and smile and laugh at appropriate moments.

When they got back to the house Adam returned the keys to Nikita with a happy grin. "Thanks."

"You're ready to drive. Now all you need is practice."

"I mean, for being so nice to Tasha. It's usually kind of awkward, you know, her and dad and me. She's not all that into hunting or soccer or stuff, so it's hard to find things to talk about. Having another girl around, you know, who can relate to all that girl stuff." Adam ducked his head and rolled his eyes a little in embarrassment, "it's cool."

Nikita smiled, one of her full smiles that made the corners of her mouth curl up. "No problem. My pleasure." She dropped her jacket and bag on a kitchen chair. "Spending all that time in the sun made me tired. I'm going to go lie down for a little while."

When Michael followed her upstairs a little later, he found her still awake, staring up at the ceiling with a hollow look in her eyes he recognized all too well. He dropped down to sit on the edge of their new platform bed, reaching out to stroke her hair off her forehead. "What's wrong, Nikita?"

"Do you ever get disoriented, living like this after," she paused, "living like we used to?"

"At first, it was almost constant." He kept stroking her forehead, he knew her headaches were bothering her again, but now she didn't like taking any medications for them, not even over the counter pills. "The only real cure was time. This life stopped seeming so strange, and started being 'real' and life before became more dreamlike."

"You seem so comfortable here." She closed her eyes, and shifted closer to him, which he took as a sign to keep smoothing her forehead. "Like you've always been here."

"Just today I had to remind myself not to break character."

Her eyes popped open. "What?"

"I think Serena Williams's fashion line is ugly and unflattering even to her."

Nikita snorted her laugh. "You would. You can be so French."

"And I can't use a single technique I know to make a young woman less nervous, which means my son's girlfriend of the last year still turns into a mumbling nincompoop in my presence."

Nikita rubbed his thigh comfortingly. "You are a scary man, Michael. A lot less scary now than before, but still, scary."

"See? It gets easier, but the past never goes away."

"I guess that was too much to hope for."

She looked sad, which terrified him in ways he couldn't define. "Close your eyes, and go to sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up."

"Lay down with me?"

Michael smiled, and kicked off his boots.

*****

Nikita woke up alone in the deepening twilight, her head muzzy and her mouth dry. She stretched under the blankets, smiling at the feel of the sheets sliding over her bare skin. She and Michael were going to have to have a serious conversation one of these days, one where she explained that just because she sometimes felt sad or worried did not mean she was going to up and leave him. Not that kissing him while tugging open his fly and wrapping her fingers around his cock and stroking until he was thrusting helplessly into her hand while trying to pull of her clothes wasn't a deeply satisfying way of banishing the fear in his eyes, because, oh, it was. These days her whole body felt tight and swollen and she was hornier than ever. Left to arrange her own schedule as she saw fit, she would chose to do nothing but fuck, eat and sleep; a program that Michael was completely enthusiastic about and would have addressed his fears nicely. But it wasn't easy or appropriate, given the daily routines he and Adam had already established before she showed up. So they were going to have to talk it out. One of these days.

When she got downstairs the lights were all off and the house felt empty, but tracking a faint noise took her down to the basement and Adam's room, where she found him playing a computer game.

"Hey."

Adam didn't look up from his game, but at least he answered. "Hey."

"Your dad around?"

"I think he went to the store."

"Oh. Okay. You hungry?"

"He's bringing home take out."

"You think? Or you know?" It was out before she could stop it, and she cringed, inwardly, at how much it sounded like her old Operations self.

Adam looked up from his game, obviously startled and abashed by her tone. "I know. Chinese."

Nikita smiled broadly, knowing it was forced but hoping it looked real. "Sorry. I'm getting hungry."

To her surprise, Adam smiled back. "Me too."

"Would you like to come upstairs and help me get the table ready?"

"Sure." Adam pushed back from his desk and stood up, and Nikita told herself not to boggle at him.

While Adam was reaching for the plates, he asked in an artificially casual tone, "So, what did you think of Tasha?"

Between telling the truth and appealing to Adam's good will it was no contest. "I think she's great. She's smart and funny and," Nikita grinned, "very pretty!"

Adam looked pleased, even as he replied, "Dad doesn't like her."

Nikita hastily opened the silverware drawer so she had somewhere else to look. The gigantic warning flare Adam had just sent up was making her want to burst into wildly counter-productive giggles. "No, not at all. He just feels he doesn't know her very well."

"Oh, c'mon. He hardly speaks to her and she's a nervous wreck around him because of it."

Nikita did not want to be defending Michael to Adam, because she actually thought Michael was being a bit of an ass about Tasha, but she also knew that Adam would regard with contempt any attempt to ingratiate herself with him by criticizing his father. "Your dad knows he makes Tasha nervous, which just makes him feel more awkward around her, and when he feels awkward, he goes all stone faced and silent.'

Adam snorted. "Yeah, no kidding!" The table was laid for supper, so he came into the kitchen and propped himself up against the counter, folding his arms across his chest and crossing his ankles and looking very like his dad. "Was he always like that?"

Nikita shrugged and nodded. "As long as I've known him."

Adam cocked his head at her. "So. He was your first boss?"

Nikita did her best to ignore how close the warning flares were getting, feeling that the opening Adam was offering worth the heat. She said, "Yeah. That's right."

"Workplace romance?"

She dropped into a kitchen chair and leaned her elbows on the table. "Something like that."

"How come you didn't know he was married?"

Nikita could not quite decide if the hard note in his tone was accusation or challenge. She equivocated. "Well – truth is – despite how much we thought we each knew about each other, there were big gaps. For both of us."

Adam did not take up the invitation to shift the subject to what his dad had not known about her. Which was probably just as well, Nikita told herself later. Adam went on, "so, you met my mom."

"Yeah. I did." She wondered if this was really the point, maybe what Adam wanted was more information about Elena. "She was a really special lady, your mom.'

"What was she like?"

"I…"

"C'mon. I know you met her, and Dad once told me you liked her and she liked you."

Nikita didn't think Adam was devious enough to make up that kind of lie, especially one that was true, so she answered. "Yes. I did like her. A lot." She smiled, remembering Elena and when she had first gotten to know her. "I don't think anyone who knew her didn't fall a little bit in love with her. She was," Nikita paused, trying to find the right words. "Warm. She was incredibly warm. Everything about her, from the colors she liked to her voice to the way she welcomed people into her home and into her heart."

Adam absorbed that in silence. It would have surprised Nikita if he could have come up with a response.

She went on, "you look a lot like her. You know that, right?"

"Well – I don't really look like my dad.

Looking at a very tanned, dark-haired boy wearing a copy of Michael's adolescent body made this comment seem very funny to Nikita. She snorted a little when she said, "Yeah. You do. You have your dad's build, but your mom's jaw and cheekbones. And her coloring too."

"So, if everybody loved her, why didn't my dad?"

Nikita was serious in an instant. "Oh Adam. He did love her. Very much."

"But she wasn't 'his one' – you are."

That warning flare was so close Nikita felt a little fried, and knew it was time to cut and run. "You know, Adam, this is making me really uncomfortable. I don't think I should be the one you ask about this. You should ask your dad."

Adam flung out his arms. "Why – so he can answer with another question?"

Seizing the opportunity to redirect, Nikita grinned and said, "That's a horrible habit, isn't it? That way he looks down his nose at you when he says, " She dropped her voice to mimic Michael's still faintly accented English, "why do you ask?" In her own voice she continued, "it used to drive me half wild."

Adam launched himself away from the counter to circle the small kitchen, flailing his arms as he went. "Used to? Oh my God, he did it at lunch today! It drives me freaking crazy, _right now_!"

Nikita grinned again and shrugged. "Well – there's always the 'stare over your shoulder while he decides if the question is too stupid to even respond to' face."

After the briefest of start of shocked understanding, Adam laughed and cried, "Oh my God! That one's even better when he taps his lips…."

And then he folded his arms across his chest and performed such an excellent and uncanny mimicry of Michael doing that very thing that Nikita started laughing too. She added, acting it out as she described it, "Or when he does that little disappointed sigh and drop in his shoulders before he finally does answer…."

Adam rolled his eyes and nodded vigorously as he laughed even harder, "Oh man. That one!"

"What's so funny?" Michael's question, as he walked in with the take out food bags, only sent Adam and Nikita into fresh gales of laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

Michael was really happy when he walked in on Nikita and Adam sharing what sounded like genuine laughter, even if they were laughing about him. The rest of that weekend was so good that he dared to hope that perhaps they had turned the corner and things would be easier and happier for everyone from then on out. Which, he supposed a week later, meant that he was destined to be disappointed. He just had not expected it so soon.

The following Tuesday he was telling Nikita that it was time to arrange to have their boat pulled out of the water for the season, when Adam asked if Elena had liked to sail. That stumped Michael briefly because he realized, to his embarrassment, he had no real idea if Elena had liked to sail or not. It had not been part of his cover profile or their life together, so it had never come up. He answered vaguely, but he saw the disappointment in Adam's face. Instead of leaving it there, Adam had been sized by perversity and started asking if Elena had liked to ski, or hunt, or camp, or canoe, or fish, or hike, or play sports; and the truth was Elena had not really liked any of those things very much. At that point, Adam had jammed his hands on his hips and wanted to know what Elena had liked to do.

That Michael had answered too quickly. "She liked to shop."

He realized immediately he had spoken too fast and too flippantly, and he tried to rescue the moment by adding, with perfect truth, that what he meant was she liked antique shops and junk stores and flea markets; she loved hunting for the unique and the rare and the beautiful, especially if it was hidden away and forgotten or overlooked. She loved to bring her finds home, clean and repair them and then display them at their best for the world to see, or, at least, those she invited into her house.

Adam said, "So, basically, you two had nothing in common."

Then he had walked out of the room and proceeded to spend the rest of the week wearing ear-phones at all times and grunting only when spoken to.

Michael had tried to make amends by telling Adam that Elena had loved classical music, and that she had enjoyed listening to Michael play the cello for her, and later for Adam. He reminded Adam that Elena had played the violin herself. He shared with Adam that he and Elena had played together some when they were first dating and early in their marriage, before Adam had been born. Adam had quit playing music the year before, when his violin teacher had retired, and so Michael suggested that they find a new teacher now and start playing together again. Adam had just shrugged and said he wasn't really interested in classical music anymore, and besides it would probably just make Nicole's headaches worse.

When Michael told Nikita about it later, she had chuckled wryly and told him not to tell Adam that Michael had also once upon a time played his cello for her, too, or that on the whole it was excellent foreplay.

They had laughed together then, but it was pretty hollow laughter.

The next weekend Michael invited Adam to take a short, overnight hunting trip, just the two of them, leaving right after the Saturday soccer games and returning on Sunday afternoon. Adam had responded with a distinctly unenthusiastic "yeah, sure. Whatever."

During the drive out of the city, as they hiked through the woods looking for birds, and as they sat by their evening fire, Michael worked hard to draw Adam out, trying to recapture their long, easy conversations of the winter before. Adam was having none of it, so in a last desperate attempt to make some sort of contact with his son, Michael invited Adam to ask whatever questions he wanted about his mother and promising to answer as fully as he could. Adam had taken him up on the offer, grudgingly at first but then with more enthusiasm and interest as Michael dredged up every memory he could of his years with Elena.

One could only extol someone's many wonderful qualities for so long, however, before the conversation got boring. Michael knew that out of guilt he had gilded most of his own memories of Elena, but he did not think he was exaggerating anything more than her son deserved. He was also uncomfortably aware that he was painting a picture of a woman no sane man would ever abandon, unwillingly or not, and Adam's increasingly pointed questions made it clear he was hearing that too. But Michael could not find his way to elaborating on qualities about Elena that would make her more human without entering into very dangerous territory. There were things about Elena that had always bothered him, and it was not her lack of interest in outdoor sports.

For Elena had, sometimes, left him nearly gaping with shock at her casual assumption that anyone who faced difficulty in life had somehow earned it through poor choices, and that if they had simply made better ones everyone could live the same life of ease and comfort that she did. She was genuinely kind to everyone, and perhaps unintentionally, she was also genuinely patronizing and condescending toward anyone less well off than she. Which was, of course, more or less, the overwhelming majority of people on the planet. He had found this attitude unfathomable and deeply offensive.

But, he had never dared even open the subject with her. Elena had been utterly ignorant of Michael's past with the violent student left, and, particularly as the politically conservative child of an Iranian exile, would have been horrified and angry if she had known about it. He had no way to talk about things he still believed about the world without fear of those old passions, locked away and encrusted with cynicism, perhaps, but otherwise undimmed with time, creeping into the conversation.

Nor was he ready bring his own past up with Adam, and in any case, it seemed excruciatingly unfair to Elena to call her out on that topic now, when there was no way she could speak on her own behalf. The best he could do was a gentle laugh as he said, "well, she could be a bit of a snob."

So, instead he had talked about Elena's mother, Adam's grandmother, the importance of their Iranian heritage, and the central role the wealthy, Paris-based Iranian-exile community had played in their lives. Adam had seemed very interested in this history, as it was largely new to him, so Michael had wracked his brain and shared everything he could think of that demonstrated how important that part of Elena's identity was to her, up to and including a long digression about Iranian politics in the 1970s and the collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty and the rise of the current regime. He had actually enjoyed how interested Adam had been in the convoluted history of twentieth-century Iranian politics, and in all the cultural signifiers important to the Iranian exile community – education, sophistication, travel, fashion, Iranian and Persian art, music and food traditions.

All in all, as they were headed back home, Michael was feeling relatively good about their conversations and the state of things between them.

Then, Adam asked, "Did you leave my mom because she wasn't white?"

"What?" Michael wrenched around to stare at Adam and nearly drove off the road his shock was so great. "No!"

"Well – I mean, you left her for a six-foot tall blond with blue eyes and mile-long legs."

All kinds of ridiculous thoughts ran through Michael's head, staring with, 'Nikita isn't six feet tall.' Recognizing those as paltry defenses against dealing with the substance of Adam's accusation, he forced himself to respond calmly. "Are you asking me if I stayed away from your mom not to protect her, and you, but because I'm a bigot?"

"Well – are you?"

Michael was silent.

"Dad?"

Michael stared out at the highway in front of him and frantically tried to figure out how to handle this new line of attack, all the while cursing himself for not seeing the possibility of it.

It had just never crossed his mind that Adam would interpret all the information Michael had poured into him over the last twenty four hours as a sign that Michael had felt Elena, wealthy, privileged, sophisticated Elena, had not been _white_ enough.

Of course, as Adam had presented this accusation in a classic "have you stopped beating your wife yet" challenge, Michael answered the only way he could. He refused to respond at all.

"Dad?"

Michael turned on the radio.

"Yeah." Adam snorted in derision. "I figured that's what you'd say."

They drove the rest of the way home in angry silence, and Michael sighed in relief when they finally pulled in the drive. "Adam."

"Yeah."

"I loved your mother and I did not leave the two of you of my own free will. Either you believe me, or you don't. There is nothing more I can say."

Adam gave him a level stare, then wrenched open the car door. Before he slammed it shut he said, "okay."

Michael let the dogs out of the back of the truck, then followed Adam inside in time to hear Nikita, in a very rallying tone, say, "come down to the basement and see all the work I got done while you were gone!" Catching sight of Michael, she called, "you too! Come see!"

The walls had been finished and primed and the carpet in the main room had been installed the week before, and the bathroom was also finished now. All that remained was to paint and furnish the main room. Michael trailed after them to discover that Nikita had painted the walls of the main open area a deep, warm red and she was holding up two large floor pillows, both upholstered in re-purposed Persian rugs. "What do you think?"

Adam crossed his arms and glared.

Nikita's happy smile dimmed. "What? Adam? What's wrong?"

Adam growled, "I can't believe you would reduce my mother to a decorating theme."

Michael felt cold foreboding sweep through his veins as Nikita shook her head in confusion and put the pillows back on the floor. She stood up and assumed the wide legged, fight or flight stance he recognized all too well from their years in the Section. "Excuse me?"

Adam kept his voice level, and very cold. "You think this will make it all okay? A little red paint and a few Persian pillows and Adam will forget we killed his mom?"

Nikita held up her hands, as if she were warding off Adam's words, her own eyes starting to snap with defensive anger. "Whoa. Adam–"

Adam cut her off disdainfully, "yeah. You did. You thought I'd be so pathetically grateful to have you remember my mother, no matter how disrespectfully, that I wouldn't care that you're the fucking whore who moved into her house and stole her husband."

Michael snapped, "Adam!"

His son turned on him, his face frozen and his eyes dark pits of repressed fury. "Oh yeah, right. I forgot. It was the vicious brown terrorists who forced you to leave your dusky Persian wife and run away with the blond Nordic sex-goddess."

The buried rage from all those years ago exploded up out of his gut so fast Michael had backhanded his son across the face before he could think better of it.

Adam straightened slowly and raised his hand to his cheek. His glare was arctic. "Yeah. Like that will show me how much you loved my mom."

Michael held Adam's stare until Adam broke and dropped his eyes, then Michael turned on his heel and left the house.

*******

Nikita sat in the dining room sipping hot water with lemon and wishing it were scotch. They should have seen it coming, she supposed. Adam had dropped plenty of hints that he was wound up tightly over what he saw as Michael's betrayal of his mother, and, more crucially if much less self-consciously, that he feared that Michael would betray and abandon him as well. That Adam entirely misunderstood the nature, and the magnitude, of Michael's betrayal of Elena was a bitter irony she told herself to savor as a reminder of all that she had hated. Life in the Section had been full of such ironies. The truth twisted just enough to be a lie, a lie leavened with enough truth to burn like acid; these were the Section's stock in trade.

All she could do now was sit and wait. The lights in the dining room were off and she had a good view of the window well outside Adam's bedroom, so she was sure that she would see him if he tried to run that way, and between the creaky stairs, the very noisy deadbolt, and the dogs moving around, she would hear him if he tried to slip out the kitchen door.

As it turned out, he didn't do either. Instead he came slowly up the stairs and hovered silently in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.

"Yes?" She asked.

"Where's he gone?"

"I don't know."

"Oh." Adam was quiet for a moment before he said, "I thought, he would have called you by now."

"No."

"Oh." Adam thrust his hands in his pockets. "I've never made him that angry before."

Nikita dropped her gaze to her hands, wrapped around her now cool mug. "I have." She shivered away a memory of blood under Michael's eye, hoping the dark hid her expression. "He'll get over it." She looked back up at Adam. She had heard the faint notes of worry and fear in his voice, no matter that he had tried to disguise them with cool indifference. She said, "He'll be back before morning."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Everyone he loves in the world is here."

Adam shrugged. After another long period of silence, he said, "I wish you had never come."

To Nikita he sounded slightly more wistful than resentful, though it was a close call, so she kept her own tone sympathetic. "I know."

"I wish you would leave."

"I know."

"You won't, though."

"No. I won't leave your dad, and your dad won't leave you. So, you and I, we're stuck with each other."

"I guess so." Adam stared at her in silence for a while longer, and then he slipped back into the kitchen and headed for his room.


	5. Chapter 5

The next weeks were awful. The atmosphere at the house was so tense Nikita broke down and started taking acetaminophen for her headaches because it was that or lie in bed and cry from the pain, which would do no one any good at all. The tension also ushered in her first serious pregnancy-related nausea and most afternoons she threw up at least once.

Adam, who had learned at the feet of a master that the best way to deal with difficult emotional issues was to say nothing of them, spoke not at all other than the barest minimum necessary to get through the day. He also clutched his victim-of-unjustified-assault cloak tightly about himself whenever his father was around, lacerating Michael with hurt stares accompanied by an almost-but-not-quite quivering chin.

Michael also took refuge in silence, but either he was out of practice or their lives no longer gave him the same outlets that he had in the Section, because instead of being merely stony and purposeful, this silence positively radiated anger. It was impossible for Nikita to get him to talk it out, though, because he denied, even to himself, that he was angry at all.

So, she threw up her hands and repainted the basement a cheery gold and bought cheap modern furniture in bright colors from IKEA. It looked nothing like Elena or Michael when she was done. Instead it looked like the first version of her first apartment. So she found a giant print of a pair of sunglasses and hung it over the couch. Michael and Adam had each, in turn, regarded the final result with a shrug and a forced smile. "It's nice," they said. "Thank you for all your hard work."

She had expected no more from Adam, but she had thought it might at least draw a real smile from Michael.

After that, she spent a lot of time at their local YMCA, burning off energy in the pool and with the weights. She also gave herself a crash course on current US racial politics, starting with the anti-racism pamphlet handed out by Adam's high school. By the time she was finished, she had a pretty good idea how Adam had managed to fall into the conclusion he had. It also left her, as with so much else about Adam, totally at a loss about how to deal with it. Michael certainly was not a racist in the way that term carried weight in the particular history of the US. But Michael did have a pretty severe, if usually reasonably well hidden, case of French cultural pride, privilege and superiority. Adam, knowing his father as well as he did, could and did sense that aspect of his father's character. It was a perfect storm of related ideas and emotions and so it was no surprise that as the American teenager he was, Adam hurled one of the nastiest accusations he knew in his father's face.

Things only got worse after Adam's soccer team lost early in the state playoffs, ending the soccer season before the second week of October.

Without practice and with more time on his hands, the best outlet he could find for his energy and his anger was to come home with pierced ears and an impressive Mohawk haircut. Michael took one look at him and asked, as snottily as possible, Nikita thought, "Where is your tattoo?"

The only answer he got was a volley of slammed doors.

After that, she cornered Michael and said, "Enough is enough. It's time."

******

Adam would have liked to stalk darkly through the hallways of his high school, but as usual they were too crowded for stalking. So he had to content himself with glowering at anyone who called his name, or jostled him, or just irritated him by being in his general vicinity.

Today had sucked even more than usual. First, there was math. He had learned that he had bombed a math test he had been too pissed off to study for. Then, when he snapped at Tasha after she had tried to console him, she cried angry tears before she stormed away. Second, he had managed to get thrown out of the lunchtime pickup basketball game for excessive force and gotten a disciplinary write up on top of it. Third and finally, at breakfast today his dad was making noises about forcing him back to the dojo, no doubt just for an excuse to kick the shit out of him some more.

He had tried complaining to his friends Jon and Paul about it, but like everyone else, they thought his dad was just fucking awesome and couldn't understand what a fucking bastard he really was. Jon had rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, yeah. Your mean dad who gives you everything you ask for and takes you hunting and skiing and sailing and camping all the freaking time. Life's rough, dude."

Paul had added, in what Adam felt was a nastily patronizing drawl, "Yeah. Terrible to have a dad who has never missed even one of your games, like ever."

Adam had snarled back, "if either of you say one God dammed word about the fucking field trips I swear to God I will put you through a fucking locker."

So now Jon and Paul were avoiding him too.

It was like his dad had planned it that way, making everyone think he was like the most totally awesome dad ever when in reality he was a giant selfish prick who did only what he wanted when he wanted and on his own terms. Like holding out for Nicole when practically every single woman, and half the married women too, who met him slavered after him. He could have had anyone he wanted, but no, he wanted Nicole and eventually, he had found a way to get her to give up whatever it was she was doing and come to him. Adam did not believe their bullshit about corporate mergers and lost jobs for one second.

At least his dad was starting to act like the bastard he was to her, too. Twice in the last week or so he'd spied Nicole making the up-yours sign at his dad's departing back. Not that Nicole would leave him. She was as hooked on his dad as he was on her. No, she would put up with being treated like shit as a trade off to total access to his dick whenever and wherever she wanted it. Hell, for all he knew, maybe they both got off on hate fucking. The freaks.

When he finally made it out the front doors of the school he would have turned around and fled, only the crush was too great. His dad and Nicole were parked right in the front of the parent pick up line, and were leaning up against the SUV, looking like an advertisement for fucking REI.

One of Adam's soccer teammates nudged Adam and pointed. "Look man, there's your dad and his hot girlfriend."

Adam muttered, "yeah," and headed for the truck.

When he got there, he saw the dogs were in the back and so was the camping gear. He slowed to a stop a few feet away. "What."

His dad said, "We're going up north. Get in."

"What if I don't want to?"

Nicole answered. "Nobody asked if you wanted to. It isn't optional Adam."

He was outraged. "What?"

His dad broke in. "I've kept a lot of information from you, because you weren't ready for it. But you need it now."

"Like what?"

His dad said, "Who we are, who you are, and why you grew up here and not someplace else."

Adam spit out, "Who you are? I already know who you are."

Nicole was suddenly hovering at his side. "You don't have the slightest idea who we are." The menace in her whisper was almost as painful the iron grip of her fingers above his elbow as she steered him toward the open door of the car. "Get in."

Adam got in the truck.

Once they were in traffic his dad nodded at a take-out food sack between them. "I thought you might be hungry. There's a sandwich and chips in the bag."

Adam almost told him he could take the food and shove it, but he thought better of it and ate the sandwich. By the time he had finished eating they were on the highway speeding north up the interstate.

"Where are we headed?"

His dad named a state park; one Adam wasn't very familiar with. "Why?" he asked.

"No interruptions, no distractions."

Adam muttered, "Nowhere to go."

"That too."

"We're camping, I take it?"

"Yes."

"Do I have to share a tent with you?"

"No. I got a second tent."

Adam nodded, then wondering at how quiet Nicole was being, looked into the back seat, only to discover that she was so sacked out she was actually snoring softly. After taking a long sip of his drink, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried to change the subject. "So, why does Nicole sleep all the time these days anyway?"

"She's three months pregnant."

Adam swallowed against the sudden rush of nausea that crept up his throat. He began to regret eating the sandwich after all.

After that they rode mostly in silence. It was dark by the time they made it to their campsite and they set up the tents and started the fire by the light of the headlamps. Nicole pulled supper out of the coolers and re-heated it on the portable stove. They sat on logs around the fire, and ate without talking.

Once his dad had finished eating, he set his dish on the ground, cleared his throat, and looked searchingly at Adam. Adam had no idea what his father expected to see, but the silence grew so long and so uncomfortable Adam found he couldn't swallow any more food without feeling he would definitely throw up, for real this time. So he put his plate on the ground too. His dad must have taken that for a sign, because he started talking.

"I was a deep cover agent sent to seduce and marry your mother. The goal was to smoke out her estranged father, who sponsored terrorism and criminal activity throughout Europe and the Middle East, and whom we could reach no other way. When his daughter's wedding was not enough to lure him out, we decided a grandchild might. You were conceived for that purpose. But your birth was not enough either. He finally broke his security protocols to visit your mother while she lay in the hospital, nearly dying from an illness; an illness given to her by my organization. Members of my team murdered her father right in her hospital room. And then they shot me in the chest. In front of her. While she screamed."

After a hazy minute or three, Adam heard Nikita's voice. "That's jumping to the middle of the story, but you needed to know why you should listen to the first part."

Adam coughed, then managed to croak out, "okay."

So, they told him. About his father's days in the student left, when he became a bomb-making, child-murdering terrorist, about his time in prison and then his recruitment to a shadowy agency that trained him to hunt down and kill criminals and terrorists that evaded more conventional agencies and organizations. His dad told him how he had learned quickly that he was very, very good at what they wanted him to do. He told him about falling in love with and marrying a fellow operative, and the way his fake courtship and fake marriage to his mom – though it had been real to her – had corrupted both his marriages.

Then the story switched to Nikita's life and things started getting really bizarre. She turned out to be the child of another operative left to grow up with a drug-addled mom and then as a homeless street rat as some sort of crazy nature vs. nurture experiment gone on steroids. When she was more or less grown, her father had had pulled her into the same agency as his dad and she had been assigned to his dad for training. Not long before Adam had been born, in fact.

The story picked up speed and the details began to blur, but somewhere between the missions and the killings, Adam understood that his dad and Nikita had found themselves neck deep in a passionate love affair as dangerous as it was forbidden. It had been so bad Nikita had tried to escape more than once, only to be caught and dragged back in. Their love affair had become even more painful as it became more apparent to those around them. Enemies and allies alike used their relationship to force each of them into action by threatening the other. The lies and betrayals started coming thick and fast and only then had Nikita finally, and by accident, learned about Adam and his mom. At which point she got roped into the whole scheme to bring down his grandfather.

After that, their story only got more convoluted, with violent internal politics broken by hairbreadth escapes from near certain execution and more frustrated attempts to run away. Weaving through all of it was the way their organization had continued to exploit his mom to bring down new bad guys, and to hold Adam's life over his dad's head, which had in turn made Adam a kidnapping victim after still more bad guys figured out what made his dad jump. When they finally got to the end of it all, and told Adam his dad had nearly ripped the organization to shreds to force them to give up his location, and how it had been Nikita's father, the man who had kicked much of it into motion in the first place, who had traded himself for Adam's life in exchange for Nikita's promise to take over and fix the whole mess, right before he was gunned down, Adam raised his hands and said, "Whoa. This has got to be utter and total bullshit."

Nikita stood up and laughed sympathetically. "You have no idea how often I said that, while it was all happening." She sobered up though, and said quietly, "I really wish it had been."

Nikita whistled for the dogs and headed for the latrines, and Adam was left alone with his dad.

His dad looked up at him and said, "So. Now you know. My entire relationship with your mother, and your life, were part of an elaborate plot to kill one man. It was all a lie."

Adam's heart was pinched in his chest as he asked, "all of it?"

"All of it. Except the part where I came to love your mom, and I love you."

Adam didn't know what to make of this, so he ignored it. "If this is all true, you could have dumped me with another foster family and stayed with Nikita. Why didn't you?"

"I could have dumped you even if it weren't all true. But I chose not to."

Adam couldn't argue with that either, so he asked, "Then, why is Nikita here now?"

Nikita dropped down next to his dad and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. "Go ahead Michael. Tell him."

His dad looked down at his hands. "I had planned to leave you when you were done with high school, and go back to Nikita." He raised his eyes to Adam's face. In the low light of the fire his expression was impossible to read. "I realized several years ago that I couldn't leave you again. So I sent a message to Nikita, and I hoped she would see it as an invitation to escape the organization and come and find us."

Nikita smiled at his dad. "Which, I did, more than a year ago." She looked at Adam. "After I was as sure as I could be I had really made it out, I started looking for you, and here I am."

Adam nodded, then stood up. Without a word to them he headed into the dark woods.

******

Nikita watched Michael's profile as he stared into the cherry hot coals of their fire. Eventually he asked, in a hollow voice, "What do you think?"

Nikita patted his arm, stood up and started picking up the remnants of their meal. She said, as briskly and calmly as she could, "we wait. We put faith in the relationship you have with Adam."

She scraped the leftovers into a bowl and added dog food. "And in the woods on a dark, cold night with a new moon, light cloud cover, and no visibility."

"You guys suck."

Adam was standing at the very edge of the firelight. Nikita caught Michael's eye and shrugged. "I told you."

Adam plopped down in front of the fire again. "So," he said, in a conversational tone, "you two are stone cold killers, that's what you're saying."

Michael nodded in agreement, but said nothing.

"And you gave it all up to protect me." He kept his eyes on his father, and skepticism dripped from him.

Nikita sat down again next to Michael, pressing as close to him as she could without actually sitting in his lap. One of her deepest and most secret fears about this scenario was that it would be Michael who bolted, and not Adam. When Michael slid his hand over her knee and started drawing loose circles against her thigh with his thumb, some of the tight bands in her chest loosened a little bit. She said, "That _life_ sucked, Adam, and most people in it dream of the day they leave it behind."

Adam looked directly at her. "You said they kept tracking you down, no matter how hard you tried to escape."

Nikita nodded, at once pleased and yet full of jagged regret that Adam had heard what they wanted him to hear. She said, "Most of my escapes were set-ups, on my part or someone else's. Yes."

"So, why is this one any different?"

"It might not be."

Adam's voice cracked. "What?!"

Nikita and Michael exchanged glances, and Michael answered. "It's possible that Nikita is being framed as a threat to one or another layer of the organization. That she was allowed to flee to support the implication that she is planning on carrying out some sort of internal coup. Rejoining me, given our past, would only reinforce that idea."

Nikita added, "It would be a version of the way they set up your mom after your dad left, made it appear she had been living as a super-double-secret undercover sleeper as a long term plot to take over her father's organization." Nikita held up her hand to forestall Adam's telegraphed outburst, "She was completely innocent of any such thing, of course."

Nikita leaned forward, trying once again to reconnect with the open, loving child Adam had been. Trying to see if she could find him still, however deeply he was buried in the angry, pierced, Mohawk-sporting teenager in front of her. "When that mission finished, that's when men came and helped you and your mom move in the middle of suppertime one night. Do you remember that?"

Adam scowled. "Yeah. A little."

Nikita sat back, sighed and explained the rest. "The way it would work in our case is that eventually one of the groups watching us would move in to pick us up, probably based on some planted information that we were about to make our big move to seize power, and then the other group would crush them."

"If that happened, what would happen to us?"

Nikita shrugged, and smiled over her nightmares. "It would depend. But," and here she looked quickly at Michael, saw his small nod, and went on, "Most likely we would die, in the crossfire or afterward. None of the groups involved would want us alive after it was all over. "

When Adam didn't say anything else, Michael said, "It is also possible that Nikita is running that same profile, as the primary agent rather than as the framed target."

Adam gaped at his father. "You're kidding."

"No."

"You think she could be setting us up – to DIE – and you just sit there?"

"No. Separately and together," Michael flashed Nikita a quick smile that made her cheeks flush in a way she was glad the dark and the fire would hide, then he turned back to look at Adam, "We have a number of fail-safes in place, hoping to gain enough margin to run if we have to."

Adam stabbed an angry hand in the air. "You just told me you guys have had a fucking legendary love affair, and you still think she could be setting us up to die?"

Michael nodded. "It's one possibility."

Adam stared helplessly at them. "Dad?! How can you love somebody you don't even trust?"

Michael reached over and took Nikita's hand between his. Lacing their fingers together, the rough pads of his fingers warm against her skin, he said to Adam, "I do trust her. I trust that if she made that choice, then, all the other options were worse."

Adam scrubbed his fingers across his face. He looked at Nikita and said, "and then you go and get knocked up in the middle of it all?"

Nikita squeezed Michael's hand, and was glad to feel his warm grip in return, as she answered. "Yep. It's either a sign of how committed I am to the profile, how much I'm prepared to risk, or," and she shrugged, "it's a sign that I really do believe I walked away successfully, and after more than a year out without sign of watchers, we think no one there cares what really happened to me. So your dad and I are seizing the day, and living the life we want."

Adam narrowed his eyes. "Are you really pregnant?"

"Yes. By December at the latest you'll be able to see for yourself."

Adam started shaking his head. "This is insane. You guys are delusional. It's all bullshit. All of it. I don't believe any of it."

Nikita smiled sadly. "Yes. You do. You believe most of it, because it makes better sense of all of the details of your life than any other story your dad ever offered you before."

"Does not!"

"Think about your life here, Adam, and not just your life before. What kind of skills and knowledge has your dad made sure to teach you?"

She watched, her heart cracking, again, as denial, comprehension and shock chased their way across Adam's face. Eventually, Adam crossed his arms over his knees and demanded, "How much of this could I prove by googling it?"

Michael said, "Not much, but some."

Nikita added, "If you want to do that, will you please let one of us teach you how to make sure your search queries are randomized, and randomly distributed across IPs so that your word strings don't flag any sort of trace?"

Adam thought that one through, then he said, "So, you're telling I shouldn't just go to the school library and start roaming the web looking for info because that could get us all killed."

Michael answered. "Yes."

"Of course." Adam pursed his lips, and said, "What did you say my grandfather's name was?"

"We didn't." Michael answered. "And we won't. Not until we think you're ready to handle the information."

*****

Nikita woke up just before dawn, when Michael came into the tent. She stretched as she asked, "Is he still here?"

"Yes." Michael finished pulling off his boots and started to roll into his sleeping bag. He paused briefly to stroke he hair back from her face and kiss her forehead, then he lay down on his back and closed his eyes with a sigh.

Stepping out of the tent a few seconds later, she headed for the campfire, smiling when she saw that Michael had made coffee for her. The ground was damp with dew, so she set up one of the canvas chairs and sat back to watch the day come, sipping at her coffee.

About an hour after sunrise she saw Adam's tent shiver as he woke up and started to move around. Adam crawled out with his boots in his hand, his patchy unshaven beard dark against the morning pallor of his skin, and with a bad case of bed-head, his defiant hairdo squashed and lopsided. He gave her a cool stare as he jammed his feet into his boots, then he headed off into the woods without bothering to tie them. When he returned he found a bottle of juice in the cooler and sat down on the opposite side of the fire, the dogs pushing at his hands and trying to lick his face. "I still think it's all a load of crap," he said.

"All of it, or just some of it?"

He shot back, "all of it!" but it lacked conviction and he seemed to hear it himself. He shrugged and corrected himself. "Well, some of it."

"Which parts?"

"Well – the whole super-double-secret organization that does whatever the hell it wants to just because it can. I mean, who pays for that kind of shit outside of the movies?"

Nikita smiled. "Honestly? Fewer people than used to. The major funding bodies have reprioritized their interests and our old organization, and its lack of loyalty to any agenda but its own, has been successively downgraded." She shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. They still have a lot of resources and remain an extremely dangerous organization, but their scope has become more limited in the last five years."

"So, why would they come after you?"

She saw the fear in his eyes and she offered what reassurance she could. "That's actually one of the reasons I think they won't. Possibly alive, but not found, I'm a useful ghost in the machine. If they actually were to find me…." She spread her hands wide, "I would be much less useful."

"And that frees you up to come play house with my dad."

She nodded. "Yeah. It does."

Adam finished his juice, dropped the bottle and stamped it flat. He picked up the flattened plastic and started turning it through his fingers. "So, you win."

"It isn't a contest."

Adam gave her a sour look of non-agreement. "Sure."

"For what it's worth, I always thought you won. He left me in hell to take you to freedom in the world outside."

"Well. I'm obviously not free anymore."

"Adam, nothing has changed since yesterday."

"Yeah, well, except – everything!"

"Only that you know things you didn't before." Nikita sighed, and then offered him a twisted smile. "I don't expect you to suddenly start liking me, or being nice to me if that's what you're worried about."

"Good." Adam gave her a tiny smirk in return. "I wasn't planning to." He stood up, shaking out his limbs. "Anyway," he went on, staring out into the woods somewhere far beyond their campsite, "I don't not-like you."


	6. Chapter 6

Adam's sixteenth birthday came and went without much fanfare. Michael knew Adam was disappointed that he had lost interest in his own birthday; sixteen was such an important watershed in Minnesota and he had been eagerly anticipating the day. But, when they asked him about it, Adam had sighed deeply and remarked that after all their revelations about the past, a mere birthday party didn't seem so important somehow. When Nikita tried to cheer him up, get him to consider some sort of celebration anyway, Adam glared at her in exasperation and exclaimed, "Look, I don't hate you anymore, okay! But I don't want a party. Let it go."

A few days later, after Nikita had commented acidly about Adam's continuing mood of gloomy self-pity, Adam had gotten a speculative gleam in his eye and suggested that a car of his own to go with his new driver's license might perk him up considerably. Fortunately, Adam had clearly not expected this suggestion to be acted on nor did he seem unduly let down when it was ignored.

Adam also wanted to skip deer hunting season for the first time since he had been old enough to go. When pressed Adam stuck to his story that he did not care for venison, so didn't see any reason to kill a deer this year. Michael and Nikita agreed privately that it had more to do with Adam's obvious newfound discomfort around the guns, or, rather, seeing them with the guns, and should not be allowed to continue. So Michael drew Adam's attention to the new deer donation program and suggested that three deer would be a big contribution to a local food shelf during what was looking to be a very hard winter for families in economic trouble. At which point Nikita had shot Michael a very dirty look indeed, but he had ignored it, and Adam had grudgingly agreed that maybe deer hunting would be okay after all. Seeing as how it would be for charity and everything.

Loading up the SUV for the drive north was uncomfortable for all of them, coming just a few weeks after their last, intense, road trip. Once they were underway, though, Nikita challenged Adam to a game of 'name that band' using songs on their mp3 players, and their state of fragile normalcy resumed in time to save them from inflicting their tensions on everyone else gathered at the Peterson family's hunting camp. Two days later, after wrestling their three deer carcasses from the woods, to the trailer, and then to one of the approved processing centers, Adam and Nikita actually started laughing at each other's jokes again.

Once training for the winter ski and snowboard season began in earnest, Adam's flat and dismal mood lifted even more. He got a fresh buzz-cut, eliminating his Mohawk, saying it was too much trouble to maintain now that he would be wearing a ski helmet every day. He kept his earrings. So Michael felt he had the time and freedom to turn his attention to Nikita. She was obviously restless now that the work in the basement was finished and the immediate tension with Adam was beginning to abate. Problem was, Michael didn't have any good ideas about how to help her, and whatever he was doing was obviously irritating her. Which was apparently why she had picked him up today, and taken him out to lunch.

Fixing him with a level gaze, she said, "Michael. Please stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Hovering. And looking concerned."

"I'm not."

"Yes. You are."

He shrugged. "Okay. A little."

Nikita smiled. "Thank you."

"I haven't done anything yet?"

"For acknowledging it."

She reached out and offered her hand, which he took and she gripped his fingers firmly. She said, "I told myself that trying to imagine my life here would be a mistake, that I should wait and make sure you wanted me with you before I built too many castles in the air." She shrugged, and hooked her toe around the back of his calf under the table. "I was wrong. I should have started trying to make some plans."

Michael stroked her hand with his thumb. "You talked about taking some university courses?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I still might."

"But?"

"I don't think that's really a long-term plan."

He sighed. "No."

"We should make some."

"Long term plans?"

"Yes."

"Adam?"

"Will be done with high school in less than three years. After that – we can do anything we want. We should think about what that might be."

"I….." He trailed off, because he had nothing to say.

"See." She gave him a teasing smile. "You never thought beyond 'wait and see if Nikita shows up' either, did you?"

Michael started to protest, and then realized it would be foolish, because she was more or less right. He smiled self-consciously. "No."

"Okay. So. Now we start. Together."

Michael went back to work later that afternoon feeling lighter than he had in a long, long time.

*****

Nikita looked back and forth between the cell phone ringing on the dining room table and Adam, who was resolutely ignoring the vibrating phone in favor of his homework.

"You know," she said, clearing her throat, "it would be much kinder to end the relationship yourself."

Adam looked up at her, his face a model of confusion. "What? What are you talking about?"

Nikita gave him the same look she had perfected on Seymour Birkoff, all those years ago.

Adam crumbled, just like Birkof used to do. He shrugged defensively, "I don't know if I want to end it. I just, want to, ease up for a while, you know?"

"Not all that long ago, you seemed really happy about it. What changed?"

Adam returned her look with interest, conveying clearly without words the sentiment, 'just how stupid are you, anyway?'

Nikita ducked her head in surrender, "Okay. But, my guess is you're hurting her feelings by just ignoring her. If that's not what you want, you should try something else."

Adam scowled. "Well, it worked for Dad."

"What worked for me?"

Adam looked up at Michael, who had just appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. "Getting your girlfriend to dump you," he said.

Michael looked back and forth between them in confusion, but settled on Nikita as the one who should answer his unspoken question.

"I was just saying to Adam, that I thought if he didn't want to be seeing Tasha anymore, he should suck it up and break up with her, instead of just ignoring her phone calls."

Michael looked back at Adam. "You and Tasha are having difficulties?"

Adam shoved all his books and papers into a pile and stood up. "I am so not talking with you guys about this."

As he shouldered his way past Michael, Nikita said, "don't forget your phone."

Adam raised his voice so they would hear him as he pounded down the stairs. "Screw the damn phone!"

Nikita closed the laptop she had been reading and said, "what's up?"

Michael folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "More pregnancy blogs?"

"Yeah." Nikita was pleased that she sounded cool, until she caught sight of the teasing laughter in Michael's eyes. She knew he didn't care one way or the other about the blogs, he just thought it was funny that she was so easily embarrassed by her fascination with them. She blushed and changed the subject. "Anyway, you look like you were about to say something?"

"Yes. Miranda Andersen just called. Now everyone we invited for Thanksgiving has said yes."

"What?! You told me you were sure most people would have other plans!"

Michael shrugged. "I was wrong."

"That's," Nikita rapidly recounted the number in her head, "that's sixteen people for dinner!"

"Yes."

"Michael! I've never cooked for more than four people at a time in my entire life!"

"So – time to learn something new."

"You swore! You swore to me that at most it would be one other family!" Nikita was trying hard not to hyperventilate. She reminded herself that she had run an elite, covert counter terrorism operation with global reach for nearly nine years by herself, against incredible odds and facing constant assault from within as well as without. A mere – gigantic – dinner party with a straightforward traditional menu should not be more than she could handle. She remembered that when she was running an elite, covert counter terrorism operation with global reach, she had had a really big staff.

She must have been telegraphing her alarm, because Michael stepped over to her and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms. Holding her firmly, and stroking a calming hand against her hair he said, "you'll be fine. Adam and I are in it with you. You aren't alone."

She mumbled against his neck, "why did they all say yes?"

Michael laughed and steered her toward the sofa in the living room. Tugging her down with him, he said, "Because Adam and I have never asked anyone over for a holiday before. We've always been the lost ones everyone else takes pity on. Now that you're here, everyone is dying of curiosity to see what we look like as a family."

She flushed with pleasure when he called them a family, but what she said was, "You have a lot of nosy parker friends."

"That was the idea."

"I don't even look pregnant, just really bloated."

Michael stared at her for a moment, then started laughing so hard he was sniggering. Finally he wiped his eyes and then ran his hand suggestively up her leg, dragging his thumb slowly along the inside of her thigh. He said, "you look pregnant when you're naked."

Nikita swung her leg across him and straddled his lap, pressing his hips deep into the couch, running her hands along his arms and onto his shoulders. "You want to see me naked?"

His voice dropped as he reached for her, strong fingers kneading her hips, and his pupils started to dilate. "Yes. Just to make sure you still look pregnant."

So, of course she kissed him. Once, then twice, then a third time, longer and harder, dragging his mouth open under hers, nipping and sucking at his lips and his tongue as she threaded her fingers through his hair, caressing his cheekbones with her thumbs. Michael slid further down into the couch, tilting his pelvis into her so she could feel his rapidly hardening erection, then brushed his hands up and under her shirt, making her shiver as he drew circles on her skin with his fingertips.

And then she heard, "Good God. You guys have a room!"

*******

Michael knew that Thanksgiving would go well as soon as their first guests arrived. Miranda took one look at Nikita, held out her hands and cried, "oh my God! You're pregnant! That's so exciting!"

The tone was set, and the rest of the day was an unending chorus of exclamations of approval and congratulations. On Nikita's pregnancy, on the new TV room in the basement, on Adam's new bedroom, on the meal, on the flowers on the table, on the weather itself, which was particularly fine, it had to be said. Nikita was more completely relaxed and happy than Michael could ever remember seeing her, vast dinner party notwithstanding, and he was pleased deep into his bones that he was the one who had been able to give this to her.

The teenagers quickly monopolized the basement for an incredibly loud Guitar Hero playoff, so the adults stayed upstairs and entertained themselves by regaling Nikita with eight years' worth of 'Michael and Adam' stories. There were a few funny mishaps along the way, or at least, stories that were funny in the telling, like the time Adam and Charlie Peterson had capsized a canoe with Michael in it because they were horsing around. Or, the time Erin Andersen and Adam had accidentally locked themselves in the basement pantry at the Andersen's house and no one noticed while the panicked nine year olds called for help. So they had saved themselves by emptying a set of shelves, dragging it over so they could climb up to the basement window, which they broke to escape. Only to later learn that there was a pull cord on the door, which would have released the latch if they had known what it was.

Michael did not spoil the mood by sharing that Adam had been white-faced and wild-eyed with panic when he and Erin finally found the adults, or that he woke up crying from nightmares for months afterward.

But most of the stories, or story-snippets, told with significant glances aimed Nikita's way, were about what a great dad Michael was, and had been, for Adam. They told Nikita about what they saw as Michael's patience and apparently endless willingness to support Adam trying whatever it was struck his fancy, from music and sports to martial arts, hunting, camping, sailing and even a brief brush with skateboard competitions. Joe and Fanny told Nikita about all the times Michael had dropped everything at work to rush to school if Adam fell ill, or had a mishap of any sort, as well as all the hours he had volunteered in the classroom. In fact, Nikita learned that Michael had been the favorite class parent, or at least the other parents' favorite class parent, through elementary and into middle school because he had always been the first to volunteer for the innumerable favors that schools asked of parents.

Michael did not interrupt to say that Adam had eventually grown to deeply resent Michael's constant presence, informed him that he was worse than the Gestapo, and had begged him to stay away.

From all this assiduous and loving care, Nikita was assured, Adam had grown to be a paragon of a young man. Adam was kind to friends, strangers and stray puppies. Adam was always willing to respond to requests for help or assistance. Adam's quick thinking and self-sufficiency had apparently saved the day on countless occasions, big and small. Adam took loving and responsible care of his friends, and especially of his father during those rare times Michael had actually needed his help. Like that time when Michael had strained his knee really badly and ended up on crutches for several months back when Adam was in fourth grade. Adam had stepped right up to take care of his dad, learning to cook and to keep the bathroom clean.

When that story was told, Nikita narrowed her eyes at Michael and asked "which leg?"

The answer was, of course, his left leg. The one he had been shot in, twice, in a single year.

Adam had branched out as he got older, and Joe and Fanny proudly told Nikita how Adam had been taking excellent care of their lawn and garden, and gradually expanding to general handy-man assistance, ever since Joe had fallen and broken his hip a few years earlier.

Joe and Geoff went on to describe all the times Adam had come in to help paint whenever they found themselves shorthanded, and how Adam had matured into an excellent employee and model for the other young people they hired to help them in the summer.

Michael came in for his fair share of praise too. Miranda and Shelia told stories about how Michael had kept all the kids on snow days that closed the public schools leaving them unattended and bored; and how everyone had loved it because not only did he keep the kids, he usually took them on some snow-related adventure that left everyone exhausted and happy. Michael had also stepped up to fill gaps in summer camps and activities, and had taken on a huge share of driving kids to practices day in and day out as they got older.

Not to be outdone, Geoff and Allison told the story of how Michael had come in the middle of the night and then stayed for days to help Geoff when Allison had been in a bad car accident the winter before.

Michael, through it all, thought it was a good thing that Nikita had endured nearly three months of Adam's progressively worse behavior, sullen, angry, spiteful and rude, so that she didn't mistake the inhuman model teen being described for the actual teenager who lived with them. He did not fear at all that Nikita would forget his own legion of faults merely by hearing others praise him.

After the last of the guests left, long after dark, Michael and Nikita collapsed on the couch and agreed it had been a very good day. Nikita curled into Michael's side and he said, "News is out about your pregnancy."

She laughed. "Better be. I tried on nearly every dress at the maternity store at the mall before I chose this one."

Michael smiled and ran his hand over the soft blue wool. "It's nice."

She grinned. "Thanks." She looked down at her hand as she smoothed his sweater. "I do have one question though."

"Yes?"

"When did Adam start sleeping with his friend Erin?"

Michael frowned. "You saw that too?"

He had hoped he had read too much into a few scattered interactions, but apparently not, if Nikita had drawn the same conclusion.

Adam and Erin had been close friends until middle school, but after that had seemed to drift apart. Once Adam had started his relationship with Tasha, Erin seemed to have vanished off his radar completely. Which Michael had always thought was rather a shame. Unlike Tasha, Erin was self-possessed and able to speak clearly in the presence of adults, and she shared Adam's interests in fantasy and science fiction, comic books and electronic games. She also loved most sports; playing basketball and soccer with Adam until middle school, at which point she had chosen to focus on her true love, downhill skiing. She had become a powerhouse racer, by far the strongest competitor on the high school team, or for that matter, in the state. She and her family hadn't quite been willing to make the commitment to see if she was Olympic caliber, but she was already receiving national attention. As tall as Nikita, she was what they called a 'big girl' in Minnesota, broad shouldered and full figured, obviously fit and strong, with shiny light brown hair and grey eyes and clear, pale skin.

Michael also knew, from conversations the previous winter with Pete and Miranda, during all those long hours at ski slopes all over the upper Midwest, that Erin's luck with boyfriends had continued to be bad, from seventh grade and her unfortunate selection of Jake Litman forward. Between her size and her skill, most boys were terrified of her and those that had the confidence to flirt with her tended to be older and to have other issues, which had hurt Erin terribly.

Nikita nodded, her eyes full of sympathy. "Yes. I did see that. It was definitely knowing, not flirting."

Michael said, "I think it must have started very recently, in the last few weeks."

Nikita cleared her throat uncomfortably. She said, "Adam hasn't broken it off with Tasha."

"He hasn't?"

"Nope. Tasha was at the ski slope all last week, even though she isn't on the team. She even came grocery shopping with us on Tuesday night."

Michael sighed. "This is not going to end well."

"No."

"Christmas will be – interesting."

Nikita opened her eyes wide in mock terror and laughed. "Oh yeah. It will."

Members of the local of the local ski and snowboard club team, including Erin and Adam, were going to Utah to train and compete for the entire upcoming winter break. Just today Michael and Nikita had finalized plans with the Andersen's for their two families to rent a condo together for the whole trip.

*****

December was always very busy for Michael as clients struggled to finish projects before the holidays, and he was busy painting Monday through Friday and into Saturdays until the day before they left for Utah.

At home, the balance he and Adam and Nikita had begun to find before Thanksgiving continued to hold, and while Adam was still far from embracing Nikita, he seemed much calmer around her, and no longer quite so focused on keeping her at arms' length. He had unbent so far, in fact, that the weekend before they left he had actually accepted Nikita's challenge in one of his electronic war games, and been reasonably cheerful about it when she beat him.

Adam was also bringing Tasha around the house more often, often enough that Tasha had, at last, relaxed enough for Michael to begin to understand what Adam liked about her. Unfortunately, what Adam seemed to like best was that Tasha really liked him. If they hadn't shared several classes, and a strong, and fairly competitive, desire to do very well in them, Michael had no idea what they would have talked about.

Nikita was also happier, which made Michael happy. Her headaches and nausea had tapered off and she was finding some women to spend time with, which was something that had always been important to her. Most of them she had met through a women's ski group at the ski hill the high school team used to practice. She switched from a snowboard to skis on the grounds of her rapidly changing center of gravity, and she skied with the group several days each week. The days she didn't ski with the group she skied alone or with Michael. She told Michael she was skiing so much so that she would be ready to enjoy skiing in Utah, but Michael thought she was also really enjoying just spending time with other women, and in doing something physically challenging for her. He certainly enjoyed that she came home glowing and revved up from the exercise. She was also teaching herself to knit, which Michael tried not to find disorienting in the extreme, but failed pretty spectacularly, much to Nikita's ongoing amusement.

During the four weeks between Thanksgiving and the winter break, Michael had done his share of picking up Adam and some of the other members of the team at the ski slope each evening. He never saw anything more to suggest that Adam and Erin were anything other than old friends and teammates. In fact he began to question what he had thought he had seen, and it was a relief to tell himself that he had imagined the whole thing.

They drove to Utah rather than fly, to Adam's vexation, but Michael and Nikita were unmoved. There was no reason for them to risk flagging any search routine by flying commercially when the trip could be handled another way, especially with three drivers to make the driving easier.

When they arrived at the resort, Michael and Nikita took one good look at the layout and realized that the fifteen teenagers on the ski-club team were going to have no trouble evading adult supervision in their non-training time, and there was no point in trying to fight it. So, they reminded Adam of the consequences if he was caught in violation of any of their rules, the team rules, and the resort rules, not to mention local laws regarding minors, alcohol and drugs, and then spent their holiday thoroughly enjoying themselves.

By skiing nearly every day since Thanksgiving, Nikita had recovered and then far surpassed her old level of skill and comfort on the snow, even with her balance altered by her now quite visible pregnancy. So she and Michael could, and did, ski hard for hours every day, exploring the full reach of the large resort and testing themselves against the conditions and each other. They also spent time watching the kids practice, especially the serious competition snowboarders and freestyle skiers that Adam was training with, because they were fun to watch on the super half pipe, sailing up and off the edges, breaking free from gravity as they spun on the air like so many seeds in the wind. In fact, Nikita liked watching so much she started getting an exploratory gleam in her eye, and then she caused both Michael and Adam to blanch nearly the color of the snow itself when she announced a desire to learn to do it too. Seeing their expressions, Nikita burst out laughing and told them to not be so ridiculous, she did not mean this year.

When they weren't downhill skiing he and Nikita were snowshoeing and cross-country skiing on the miles of trails winding around the resort, or they were eating too much rich food in the expensive restaurants that dotted the city, or taking long naps together in the middle of the afternoon just because they could. They did share a brief moment of regret that Nikita couldn't use the hot tub, but then she leaned over and bit gently at his earlobe, saying "well, it wasn't private anyway, so there's not much to miss."

They also spent time with Erin's parents, and if Miranda and Nikita were not likely to ever be the best of friends, they enjoyed each other's company well enough that they took off to spend half a day at a local spa and then to go window-shopping at the overpriced boutiques that lined the streets.

The ski-club training seemed to go well and most of the team members, including Adam and Erin, were satisfied by their improved rankings at the end of the competitions. There were also at least two mornings when Michael was sure Adam was nursing a mild hangover, and one night when Adam and the rest of the snowboarders rolled in red-eyed and stoned out of their minds, to the extent that Michael was just really grateful that none of them had broken their necks, or anything else, out on the terrain slopes. Their coaches had immediately launched a surprise room search, but they turned up nothing and so decided to officially ignore it. Michael and Nikita, watching from the edges along with the other parents on the trip, could have told them where the kids had hidden their stashes, but as Adam was not one of the kids to have a hidden stash, they quickly reached a non-verbal agreement that, in this case, official ignorance was really the best option.

So, as the trip came to an end, Michael was not terribly surprised to see signs that Adam and Erin had clearly found some time alone together; disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised.


	7. Chapter 7

Adam stared sleepily into the light, late January snow rushing into the headlights as they sped toward St. Paul. His dad was driving, and they were on their way home after a weekend tournament in the far northern region of the state. He was half listening to the music on his iPod and thinking about his current problems, when he heard himself say, "I could use some advice."

His dad said, "about what?"

Adam almost said, 'nothing,' but thought better of it. His dad might be a lying jerk, but he was a pretty cool lying jerk, and anyway, Adam had to talk to somebody about what was going on. At least he knew his dad was really, really good at keeping secrets. He pulled out his earphones and said, "I think I'm in kind of a mess."

"What kind of mess?"

"Girls."

"Ah."

"I'm, sort of, seeing two girls at the same time."

"Tasha, and –?"

"Erin Andersen."

"I see." His dad paused, and then asked, "Do they know you're seeing more than one person?"

Adam sighed deeply. "Erin knows. Tasha doesn't."

"How did it happen?" His dad sounded sympathetic, and not disappointed, which was a huge relief to Adam.

"Erin and I hooked up at a party, last fall. It wasn't supposed to happen, it just, did. We swore we wouldn't do it again, that we were just friends."

"And?"

"Yeah. Well. We did it again. And again. And, we're kind of, still doing it."

"Having sex."

Adam was glad the dark hid his blush. "Yeah."

"How does Erin feel about that?"

"She says she's cool with it, just being friends with benefits," Adam shot his dad a look, making sure he knew what Adam was talking about. He didn't appear to be confused, so Adam went on. "But, she's not cool with me lying to Tasha. I'm not feeling so good about that either."

His dad didn't say anything, so after another minute Adam told him the rest. "Erin said this weekend that either I come clean with Tasha, or we have to be 'just friends'."

"With no benefits."

"Yeah."

"And you think she means it."

"Yeah. I do."

"Good for Erin."

Adam said, without heat, "I knew you'd take her side."

"Whose side are you on?"

"I don't know." Adam shifted restlessly. "I don't want to hurt Tasha's feelings, or have a big scene, you know? But," Adam shifted again and fell silent because he did not know what he wanted to say next, or, rather, he knew but he didn't really want to say it out loud.

Fortunately, his dad said it for him. "But you don't want to stop being 'friends with benefits' with Erin."

He felt his cheeks heat again. "Yeah."

"You already know what you have to do."

"Break up with Tasha."

"Yes." After a moment his dad went on, "I think, even without Erin in the picture, your relationship with Tasha has run its course. I think you know that too. That's probably part of why you 'hooked up' with Erin in the first place."

Adam rolled his eyes at his dad's profile. "No. I think I hooked up with Erin cause she's really got it going on."

Adam saw his dad's smile, and knew he was laughing at him. Silently, but definitely laughing. His dad said, "Do you want to keep seeing Tasha?"

"No."

"So, what's the problem?"

"Is there any way I can get out of this without being a total dick?"

"No."

Adam shot back, "You'd know, I guess."

"Yes. I know."

They rode in silence for what felt like a long while. Finally, Adam said, "I've been thinking. Maybe Nicole wasn't really the person I should have been mad at."

"No."

"You were the dick."

"Yes."

"And, maybe, you didn't mean to be."

"No. I didn't set out to be. One thing led to another and then it took almost everything I had just to keep both of them alive. In the end, I couldn't even do that." Adam could hear, now, all the pain and regret in his dad's voice. His dad glanced over at him, then back at the road. He said, with more sharpness than Adam thought really necessary, "your stakes aren't that high."

"No." Adam scowled in frustration. "But Tasha is going to cry. A lot. And then yell at me. And then tell everyone what an asshole I am."

"Yes."

Adam was silent.

"Do you want to be more than 'friends with benefits' with Erin?" his dad asked.

"I don't know. I don't think she wants more. At least, not till ski season is over."

His dad laughed for real then, but didn't say anything else about Erin. A little while later, as the glow of city lights began to appear on the horizon, he said, "You might tell Nicole what you told me."

Adam blinked in horror. He was not ready to tell Nikita what a jerk he had been, especially since she had been spending so much time with Tasha lately. He could anticipate quite clearly what Nikita's reaction to that would be. He said, "Or, I could just apologize for having been a real dickhead last fall."

"Better still."

******

Nikita snapped her phone closed and stalked into the kitchen. "You know," she said, glaring at Adam and Michael, "it would be a lot easier for me if you two would keep me up to date on important life developments."

They both looked up, nearly identical expressions of confused innocence on their faces. Adam, being much younger and much less experienced, said, "What?"

"That was Tasha. Crying."

Adam started examining the fork in his hand. He sounded contrite as he said, "I didn't know she had your number. Sorry."

"I didn't know either."

Adam kept his eyes on his silverware, and asked, in a tone of casual disinterest, "What did she want?"

Nikita raised her brow. "To know why you broke up with her, and who you were seeing behind her back."

Adam's head shot up again and now his expression was one of guilty apprehension. "What did you tell her?"

"That you were the only person who could answer those questions." Then Nikita folded her arms across the top of her belly and did her best smiling-Madeline impersonation, saying, "I could have told her the truth."

Adam looked both startled and far more worried, which Nikita felt was reasonable payback for the tearful phone conversation she had just endured. She kept her smiling-Madeline face on. "You broke up with her because you aren't interested in her any more, because you don't really have anything in common. And you've been sneaking around with Erin Andersen on the side for the last three months."

Adam snapped indignantly, "Erin isn't 'on the side'!"

Nikita snapped straight back, "To Tasha she was."

Adam ran his hand through his hair. "I know."

Nikita added, "do I get to say, 'I told you so' now?"

Adam sighed, "I was a jerk."

Nikita pulled out her chair and sat down. "Yes," she said. She patted Adam on the arm. "But, everyone is, one time or another."

"Yeah?"

Nikita relented, because she really did think the right thing had happened, and the likelihood of sixteen year olds handling the end of their first major relationship really well was slim to none, and so she smiled at him. "Oh yeah."

She picked up her own fork, but then decided that her now cold breakfast was completely unappealing and put it back down again. Michael stood up and whisked her plate away. He said, "I'll make you something fresh."

"Thanks." Nikita smiled gratefully at Michael. Leaning back and sipping her tea, she felt a twist and a thump. She grinned and said to Adam, "baby's moving. Give me your hand."

Adam complied and Nikita pressed his palm against her belly, noting again what she had noticed before, that Adam's hands were about the same size and shape as Michael's. "Feel that?"

Adam frowned in concentration for a moment, then said "Yeah!"

He looked up at her and grinned. "Pretty cool, mom-to-be."

******

Nikita frowned at the computer screen, highlighted a block of text, and deleted it. She knew she was over-obsessing about her essay, but, after all, that was the purpose of taking some university courses, right? To explore new things as part of figuring out who she might be and what she might do, now that she could make her own choices? She tried not to dwell too often on the absurdity of her life, that she was just getting around to doing this now, in her late thirties.

She was taking two classes, an introduction to women's studies course and an art history course. Her only real struggle so far was to be patient as the younger, less-intense students slowed down or interrupted her own full bore enthusiasm for wringing everything she could from the material.

A commotion at the door signaled the arrival of Adam and Michael, and in seconds Adam was yanking out a chair and thumping down across from her. He was rigid with nervous energy, his expression was pleading and his voice was urgent. "Nicole? I need your help. Please."

"Sure." Looking away from Adam she caught sight of Michael, dark and stone-faced in the kitchen doorway. More cautiously she asked, "with what?"

"Convincing dad to let me go to the division championships with Erin and her parents."

"But, I thought you didn't qualify?"

Nikita was confused. She had skipped the trip last month to the upper peninsula of Michigan for the February regional meet, eight hours in the car each way with the baby squashing her bladder had not appealed to her at all, but she was sure she had properly understood the results. Adam had done very well, but not quite well enough to go on.

"I didn't. Erin did."

"So, why would you go?"

Adam raised his chin. "Supporting boyfriend."

"Oh." Nikita suppressed her laughter at the sight of Adam's expression of defiant embarrassment. "When did this happen, this official 'girlfriend, boyfriend' status?"

He lifted his shoulder, "A while ago, does that matter?"

"Define 'a while'."

"Like, two weeks ago. Okay?" Adam rushed on, batting away the mundane details. "Erin asked if I would come be with her, and her parents said that they were cool with it, and now dad is being all negative about it."

"Well. Flattered as I am that you are appealing to me for help, I don't think–"

Adam cut her off, "Please. I'm not asking you to do anything but talk to him about it. Please?"

"Okay."

Adam beamed in relief. "Thanks!"

She shook her head at him. "No promises, Adam. Just talk."

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you!" Adam hopped out of the chair, then fidgeted helplessly for a moment, obviously torn between wanting to fling his arms around her and hug her but not yet ready to cross that line, then he gave up and bolted out of the room.

As the sound of Adam's thudding passage to the basement faded, Nikita folded her hands over her belly, sat back and gave Michael a long look. Unlike his son, he did not flee, but he did find something fascinating in the living room to stare at. A smile tugging at her lips, she said, "you said 'no' before you even thought about it, didn't you?"

"Maybe."

"Have you thought it about it now?"

When he didn't move or answer, she said, "it would be nice to have a few days when it was just us, don't you think?"

Michael still wouldn't look at her, but she saw the smile as he shrugged. Unlike Adam, Nikita had no problem heaving herself out of her chair to fling her arms around Michael.

Michael did give his permission for Adam to go, to Adam's delighted relief. After that the only hurdle was Miranda Andersen's phone call to Nikita, in which she asked Nikita point blank if Adam and Erin were having sex with each other.

Nikita took a deep breath, ran rapidly through the various options and their consequences, and then told Miranda the truth. "Assuming 'hooking up' means 'having sex'? Yes. They are. Since last fall."

"Last fall?" Miranda's voice grew rather faint.

"If you and Pete don't want to deal with it, I understand. It is – weird – dealing with horny teenagers. I'm sure Adam and Erin will understand, too."

Well, actually she was sure Adam would be a horrible pouting nightmare about it if the trip were derailed at this point, but it wasn't her call to make.

"No…." Miranda trailed off, obviously not saying something.

Nikita offered, "Mike has done a really good job with the whole safer-sex education thing, if that's what you're worried about."

"No. No. Erin's got that well in hand." Miranda paused, then burst out, "The truth is, at the junior nationals two years ago, Erin had a really awful experience with an older boy. She has always refused to talk with us about it, but I'm sure he raped her. That's why she wouldn't go last year. I think that's why she wants Adam to come with her this year."

Nikita had to take a moment to absorb that information. At last she said, "Well, then I think we should trust Erin's judgment about what she needs now. And if a 'visible boyfriend' charm is working for her, that's a good thing. And Adam's a good kid."

"I had heard he had a different girlfriend until quite recently."

"Oh. Oh." Nikita felt enlightenment dawn. "Yes. He did. It took him a long time to work up the courage to make a clean break, because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. Which was juvenile, but…." Nikita trailed off and let Miranda draw the obvious conclusion. Nikita went on, "He did the right thing in the end, by the way, and took the consequences for it too, because Erin told him he had too."

Before Adam left with Erin and her parents for Colorado, Nikita sat him down and told him the gossip Erin's parents had heard about him and Tasha, and that it bothered them to think that Adam might hurt Erin in a similar fashion. "Erin clearly trusts you, when it's not obvious why she should feel that way given that you started out by cheating on your girlfriend to be with her."

Adam paled then flushed, sinking in on himself and staring down at his hands. After a long pause he straightened up and looked directly at Nikita. "Me and Erin, we've been friends for a long time."

"Yes. I know." She smiled encouragingly; suddenly certain there was something important about what Adam was going to say.

"Erin trusts me because I trust her too."

Nikita just waited him out.

"When we were kids, we got stuck in her basement. I had, kind of…" Adam trailed off and shrugged uncomfortably, staring down at his hands again, which he had unconsciously fisted until his knuckles turned white. He deliberately spread his hands flat on the table before he continued. "I had, like, a flashback. I was really freaked out. I couldn't breathe. I started to cry and Erin, she helped me calm down. I told her about what happened, back in France. Not everything, but more than I've ever told anyone else."

Adam looked up at Nikita again. "She's never told anybody. Not even her folks.

"So, that's why you trust her."

"And why she trusts me. That party, last fall, there was this asshole senior giving her a hard time. She was obviously really freaked by it. After she told him to shove off I asked her what was wrong. She told me some stuff," Adam hesitated for a moment, then went on. "It's not my stuff. But that's when," he broke into a brilliant smile, "our stuff started."

Nikita was impressed with both of them, and yet more perplexed than ever. "So, why didn't you make a clean break with Tasha right then?"

Adam covered his eyes with his hand. His voice was muffled when he said. "Because I was being a dick."

"Which is what Erin's parents are afraid of."

He dropped his head to the table and his voice echoed hollowly. "I know."

Concerned that she had over done it, Nikita worked to restore him to cheerfulness by reminding him that Erin wanted him to come with her, and her parents had, in fact agreed. And that learning how to handle relationships well was a normal part of growing up. Adam eventually recovered enough to laugh a little and say, "Yeah, okay. I get it. Thanks." He shot her a quizzical look, "did you make stupid dating mistakes when you were in high school?"

It was one of those moments that crept up on her, and left her shocked and a little breathless as the horror show of her past life reared up in all its crystalline sharpness, mocking everything she thought she had today. "I–" she paused, and tried again. "I didn't go to any one high school long enough, and I was too much of an outsider to have boyfriends."

She abruptly felt ashamed of herself. "I'm the last person who should be trying to tell you what's normal, Adam. Not one damn thing about my life has ever been normal. The closest I've ever come to living a normal life is the last eight months, here, with you and your dad."

Adam reached out and squeezed her hand. "Well, you fooled me, because you're doing a really good job."

Nikita's heart swelled and she smiled while sternly telling herself not to cry. "Thanks."

Other than Erin not doing as well as she had hoped in the races themselves, Nikita gathered from all reports that the trip out west had otherwise apparently been a splendid success. Which was good because as her due date was rapidly approaching it was a relief to feel that she could let Adam and the drama of his romantic life fade into the background.

The last of the snow melted in late March, ushering in grey, muddy weather. Adam's old bedroom was repainted a pale yellow and re-furnished as a nursery. Nikita pulled out the Persian-carpet floor pillows she had found in the autumn and saved ever since, put them in the baby's room, and silently dared Adam or Michael to say anything at all about them; a dare they had both wisely declined.

In early April the trees began to push out their first bright green leaves and the crocuses and daffodils and tulips burst into riotous spring color. Women from her ski group, working with Miranda and Erin, organized a baby shower for her and Michael. Between their hosts and their partners and their kids, the rest of the families she had met through Michael and Adam, from hunting, or the dojo, or Adam's sports, and a handful of new friends of her own from her university classes, there were literally scores of people at the Andersen's house offering gifts and congratulations. Nikita had never in her entire life experienced anything as amazing and as disinterested and as open as that, certainly nothing focused around herself and without any threat of the imminent destruction of the world-as-they-knew-it. She was so overwhelmed she had shut herself in a bathroom and wept while Michael guarded the door and made excuses based on late stage pregnancy.

She was overwhelmed all over again, in a different way, once Adam and his friends carried in all the baby gear they had received, strollers and car seats and a swing and jumpers and baby carriers and diaper bags and a portable crib and a saucer and a highchair and diaper pails and crib mobiles, not to mention piles of clothes and towels and blankets and stuffed animals, and bottles and dishes and spoons and diapers and wipes and creams and lotions, and it filled the living room and spilled into the dining room as well.

Staring at it all in a daze she asked, "did you and Elena have this much stuff for Adam?"

"Yes. We did." Michael looked a little dazed himself. "But," he shrugged helplessly, "our house was more than twice as big, so there was someplace to put it all."

A week out from her due-date, Nikita had read and re-read dozens of books about babies and childbirth, drawn up her ideal birth plan, prepared a kit with all the recommend items, and had knitted two blankets, an afghan, and after a few false starts, booties and an infant cap.

By herself and with Michael, she organized their papers, prepared new documents, stockpiled cash, readied guns and ammunition, laid in extra medical supplies, and packed emergency bags for all four of them. It would be just like the Section, had they tracked her after all, to strike while they were at their most distracted and most vulnerable, and least likely to react violently. Certainly, it was the kind of thing she had done, when she was in charge.

Drawing on her still faintly audible Australian drawl, Nikita had created a family history for herself and shared it freely whenever she needed to. Which, given her pregnancy and the inevitable discussions of families and child raising that flowed from this, was often.

This history explained both her accent and set the stage for any quick exit. She highhandedly moved her only sister to Brisbane, and saddled her with their elderly and difficult mother. The imaginary difficult mother being both the reason Nikita had spent her adult life outside of Australia, and the reason they might have to pick up at a moment's notice to help Nikita's sister in the event of accident or illness. As in real life, their father was dead. It disturbingly easy to express real anger and real resentment for her sister, and to tell true stories about her childhood living on the thin margin of disaster with an erratic, alcoholic mother.

Everything was ready when the baby came, within a day of his due date. He was born at home, with a midwife in attendance, because Michael and Nikita felt there was no reason to have more contact with officials or hospitals – and their record systems – than necessary. As her pregnancy had been problem free, so was her delivery. Michael and Adam were there, Michael caught the baby and Adam held him while Michael cut the cord. He was healthy and strong and had blue eyes and reddish brown hair. They named him Robert, and called him Robby.


	8. Chapter 8

Michael lay on his side on their bed and watched Nikita run her fingers lightly over their infant son, who was asleep between them. At two weeks old, Robby had begun to fill out and lose the scrawny newborn look, and he was also losing what little hair he had been born with. He was on his back in the middle of their bed, with his tiny arms flung wide and every now and then his mouth would move as he dreamed of suckling at his mother's breast.

Nikita looked up and caught Michael staring at her. She smiled. "Hey."

He smiled back at her. "Hey."

Her smile faded a bit and she asked, "Do you ever feel…" She trailed off and made a face, trying to distance herself from her question with self-mockery. "Adrift?"

"Yes."

"I mean, I'm happy. I'm really, really happy. I have right now, in this room, in this house, everything I've wanted and dreamed about for the last fifteen years. And it is more amazing than I knew how to imagine." She curled her finger around Robby's hand. "So, I feel like there shouldn't be a 'but,' but –"

"There is."

"Yeah." She pulled her mouth into a deep frown. "I hated the Section right? But, when your choice is get out of bed or die, you get out of bed with a certain – intensity. That is, when you're not thinking seriously about death." She shrugged again, and smiled a little, rueful smile. "Then, once I was Operations, well, the sense that you might save the world again today, that's – powerful."

"I know."

"So, how did you learn to live without it?"

"I didn't. Not all at once. I thought I was going back, and so everything I did was part of the profile. To get Adam trained to survive on his own, while building him a life he might not have to run from." Michael reached out and lightly stroked the back of his finger along Robby's soft cheek, still amazed that he and Nikita had actually managed what had seemed so utterly impossible for so long. He looked back at Nikita. "And then, when I realized I wasn't going back, I had years of habit to fall back on."

"Right."

"I had my job, and Adam's needs, to get me through the days."

"Do you ever miss it?"

He knew what she meant. "That intensity?"

Nikita nodded, her eyes steady on his.

"Yes."

"Oh."

He offered, "I'm happy now."

"I know." She grinned at him then. "You smile so easily and so often. You even laugh, really laugh. You never used to laugh like that."

"Which – also feels strange."

Nikita looked back down at Robby, cradling her fingers around his smooth, balding head. "So, if we're both happy, why do we feel this, weird, floating nowhere sort of feeling at the same time?"

"Veterans can feel like this. Cult walkways too."

"Well, I suppose, in a way, we are both."

"Yes."

"So, how do we find something else?"

"We don't. We adjust to living a fully human life, and let go of the idea of trying to recapture what was so artificially intense."

"Artificially?"

"The world hasn't actually blown up yet, without us, has it?"

"No. It hasn't." Nikita chuckled softly. "So, what you're saying is, we, me, I, I should get over myself a bit, yeah?"

"Yes. And be easier on yourself too. I've had almost ten years to deal with this, you've had, what, eighteen months?"

"More or less."

"Give yourself more time."

*****

Michael thought about their conversation often over the next weeks as he carefully watched Nikita adjust to the mundane reality of parenting an infant. Dealing with Adam and the mercurial nature of teenage drama had really not been a very good introduction to the tedious nature of daily life with a newborn. For one thing, a teenager was a lot more variable than a new baby.

Which Adam demonstrated by presenting them with a brand new challenge, this time while Michael was washing dishes after supper. Adam appeared at the top of the stairs to the basement and declared, "A bunch of us want to go camping over Memorial Day. Without parents along."

Feeling Nikita's eyes on the back of his head, Michael did not say, "no." Instead he asked, "Who is in this 'bunch'?"

Adam rattled off a string of names, most of them familiar to Michael. It did not escape Michael's notice that the group was a nearly even mix of boys and girls. When Michael pressed him, Adam turned out to have a well-thought out plan. Adam had chosen a park, looked into the campsite rules, made a reservation, and had a plan for when they would leave and when they would return and who would be driving and how and what they would eat and where all the equipment would be gathered from.

As impressed as he was, Michael still wanted to say no. He was also sure that as soon as he turned to look at her, Nikita would urge him to say yes. Which she did, sort of, but in a way Michael did not anticipate.

She leaned up against the doorframe to the dining room and said, "I think it sounds like a lot of fun."

Adam frowned. "But?"

"Here's the thing. You, Adam formerly-Samuelle, cannot get busted by the park rangers. Not in the way other teenagers should avoid getting busted. In the way people who are supposed to be invisible and are hiding from other people who will have no hesitation about hunting them down and killing them if they get a solid lead, can't get busted. Do you understand that?"

Adam shrugged. "Yeah. Sure."

"I don't think you do. If you get busted, if there is any official record tied to the name on your drivers' license, we will immediately walk out on this life. Everything you have here under this name; your friends, your school, your grades, your soccer stats, your snowboard ranking, your relationship with Erin, all of it, gone. Do you understand that? Really?"

Adam blinked at her intensity, but otherwise did not answer. Michael suspected Adam could not have formed an answer for anything less than a credible threat of death.

"So," and Nikita smiled a smile that was much too close to a Section smile for Michael's true comfort, "you have to decide. Can you trust your friends to keep themselves, and you, out of trouble?" She tilted her head and looked Adam over appraisingly. "Can you trust yourself to pick up and run, ditch your friends at the very first sign of things getting out of hand?"

"Um…"

Nikita nodded understandingly. "Okay. How about this? Your dad and I come camping too, same campground, different campsite. Not too close, but close enough to walk between them. Everyone knows we're there, you, your friends, and their parents. You blame your obsessive, interfering dad for having to follow the rules, but otherwise, we leave you alone."

"Dad?"

Michael exchanged a long look with Nikita. "Okay," he said.

"Nick – you are awesome!"

After Adam pelted down the stairs to contact his friends, Michael looked at Nikita. "Obsessive interfering dad?"

"It's the price you pay for also being the cool dad."

"I didn't know you could be both."

"Well." Nikita prowled over to him and trapped him against the sink, reaching around him with her arms, pressing close inside his space. "You've always been a paradigm breaker, Michael."

"You're feeling better."

She kissed the side of his mouth. "Yes."

He slid his hands over her hips and pulled her closer. "I was worried."

She kissed the other side of his mouth. "Me too."

He slipped one hand up her back to the nape of her neck, and brushed her lips with his. "What changed?"

She dragged her lips over his. "Time." She kissed his chin. "Robby smiled today." She kissed his cheek. "I had a good run." She bit gently at his other cheek. "I got 'As' in both my classes." She kissed him hungrily on the mouth. "I got my IUD today."

He kissed her back, letting everything else melt away in the familiar, welcoming heat of her mouth and her body.

"Oh my God! Do you guys never use your room?"

******

Adam staggered into the backyard and flung himself onto the grass, rolling onto his back and staring up at the sky. "What are you trying to do? Kill me?"

Nikita laughed and exchanged eye rolls with Erin. They had beaten Adam to the backyard and were already stretching out after their run. Then Erin stepped over Adam and dropped down to straddle his waist. "Yes." She said, her eyes glinting with more laughter. "That's my diabolical plan. To kill you."

"Making me run flat out for five miles will do it."

"You're not dead. Not yet, anyway."

"So," Adam asked, reaching for her hips, "what's next on your list then?"

Erin laughed again and slid out of his reach, further down his legs to sit on his feet. "Sit ups."

"What?!"

Nikita finished unfastening all the straps that held Robby securely in the jogging stroller. She called, "I have to get the baby cleaned up. Who wants water?"

Adam and Erin's "we do!" followed her into the house.

When she came back outside, Adam and Erin were finishing sets of crunches, apparently while racing each other to see who would get done the soonest. Nikita settled into a chair in the shady side of the deck and propped Robby in her lap while she adjusted her bra and a light blanket preparatory to nursing him. Robby waved his arms in the air and cooed at the clouds and Nikita smiled because he was the most amazing two-and-a-half-month old baby in the world, and he was hers.

As she finished nursing Robby she heard Michael's SUV pull into the drive and in a few seconds he appeared around the corner of the house. Michael dragged over a chair and sat down next to her, holding out his hands to take Robby and spend a few minutes talking to him. Robby smiled broadly, gasped and pumped his fists and kicked his feet, delighted to hear his father's voice. Nikita handed Michael one of the water bottles she'd brought outside, then looked out to the yard as Adam and Erin tumbled to the grass again. They had pulled out a soccer ball and were playing some sort of game that seemed to mostly involve tripping each other in the name of attempting to steal the ball.

It was making the dogs all excited too, and as Adam and Erin rolled on the ground, laughing and stealing kisses from each other, the dogs jumped over them, trying to get in on the action.

Nikita said, "Are they even trying to stay on their feet?"

She was rewarded by one of Michael's better I-am-not-even-going-to-answer-that-incredibly-stupid-question stares. She said, "right. They're not."

Michael smirked. After checking his watch, he called out to the giggling teenagers on the lawn, "do you still want to go sailing tonight?"

Adam hopped up and then pulled Erin to her feet. They exchanged a quick glance as they walked hand in hand up to the deck, and then Adam said, "Actually, we were thinking, maybe, you guys could go out. Like, on a date. If you wanted. We'll watch Robby."

Nikita and Michael exchanged a startled look. Nikita said, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah." Adam shrugged. "I mean, like, don't be gone all night or anything, but Robby can go a few hours without you, right?"

Erin added, "We'll be fine. I've done a lot of babysitting for my cousins, including infants."

Nikita checked with Michael again, and then said, "Okay. Thanks!"

Adam and Erin vanished inside, saying they would get cleaned up and be right back out to take Robby. Nikita knew she should head up and get changed too, but it was so nice to sit there, with Michael and their baby, in the early evening air. A minute or two later they heard the basement shower come on, and Nikita winked at Michael and said, "I bet you four loads of laundry they don't remember to pretend they each took their own shower."

"Taking the dogs to the vet for their shots says Adam does. He is very well trained."

Five minutes or so later the shower went off, and then after a lull just long enough for Nikita to think she'd won, the shower went back on. Michael laughed. "The appointment is on Thursday."

They went out to a Vietnamese restaurant Michael liked, and then strolled hand in hand around the crowded urban neighborhood that surrounded it before heading home. As they pulled on to their street, Nikita was struck by an unwelcome thought. "You don't suppose Adam and Erin would get any really stupid ideas from watching the baby, do you?"

She was quite relieved, then, when they walked in to discover Adam pacing while jiggling a fussy baby in his arms. He thrust Robby in their direction with a relieved smile, saying, "He hasn't stopped crying for an hour. I think he's hungry. Can we take your car?"

Hardly more than a minute later Adam and Erin peeled out of the driveway, headed out to 'catch up with friends.'

Nikita winced. "Does he have to squeal the tires like that?"

Michael just gave her another look.

*****

Adam took a giant swallow from the cup Jon handed him, then nearly choked to death. "Jesus, dude! You could have said it was beer, not punch!"

Jon was pounding him on the back and laughing. "I thought you'd be grateful I figured out how to snag us some."

Somewhat recovered, Adam took a more normal drink from his cup. Glowering at Jon from under his brows, he said, "You walked up to the keg when no one else was there?"

"Yeah." Jon flushed. "Will your dad be freaked out if he catches you?"

"My dad?"

"Yeah."

"Freaked out because we're having a beer at backyard cookout surrounded by parents?" Adam shook his head and laughed. "Dude. No."

Jon rolled his eyes. "My mom made this huge deal out of letting us have non-alcoholic beer when we turned fifteen."

Adam laughed and offered his cup. "I've been drinking wine at the dinner table since, like, before I can remember. Cheers, man."

"Cheers." Jon tapped his plastic cup against Adam's. After taking a drink, Jon went on, in a super casual voice, "Jake just showed up, with his family."

"Where?"

"Over there. Talking to Erin."

"Cool. I've hardly seen him since last summer."

"He's more of a tool than he used to be."

"What do you mean?"

"Well. Here he comes. You're about to find out."

The sound of his alarm clock the next morning made Adam's whole head throb, and he groaned as he reached to turn it off.

"Here." He turned to look blearily up at the sound of Nikita's voice. She walked into his room and set a handful of small white bottles on his desk, along with a glass of water. The rattle and clank seemed very loud to Adam. "Your choice of pain relievers and water."

Adam closed his eyes and groaned again.

"Sorry. But, your dad wants to leave for work soon."

Adam didn't open his eyes. "I guess I kind of over did it."

"Yes."

"Is he mad?"

"No. I think he's more than a little proud of you."

"For getting shit-faced at a family barbeque?"

"No. For walking away from a fight."

"Oh." The pain in his head receded just a bit and he felt more cheerful. It had been really, really hard to walk away from Jake last night. But after the unexpected teasing turned to insults and the insults had turned ugly and Jake threw his first clumsy punch, Adam had realized, thanks to all he had learned working out with his Dad and, now sometimes Nikita too, that he could stomp Jake flat. He also realized that he did not want to do that. Not in front of everyone at the party, and, maybe, not really, ever.

Adam opened his eyes. Nikita was sitting a few feet away in his desk chair. "For real?"

She smiled at him. "Yes." Then she shrugged. "Less proud of the shit-faced thing afterward, but he understood."

"I know you haven't seen Jake much, but, he was my best friend for years."

"I heard. Michael told me."

"Jake shouldn't have said that shit about Erin."

"No."

"And he definitely shouldn't have called me a pussy-whipped wetback faggot."

"Well. You did tell him he was; how did it go? A pus-filled sack of lying shit with a tiny dick?"

Adam laughed, which made his head throb again. "Oh. Ow."

"Get up. Take a shower. And then call Erin, she's already called once for you."

Adam was still working for his dad this summer, the money was just too good to pass up, and now that he could drive he spent a fair amount of time shuttling equipment and people back and forth between the shop and around the various work sites. Summer soccer went really well and he was sure he would start this fall on the high school 'A' team.

Robby got bigger and more fun to play with, and Adam finally confessed to his dad that he had desperately wanted more siblings when he was younger. Erin rolled her eyes and said he only wanted siblings because he had no idea how obnoxious they could be. Between living only a few blocks from each other, and having access to cars, and parents, or, at least, his dad and Nikita, who were willing to play dumb, he and Erin had been able to spend plenty of time together as well. The only exception was two weeks in July she when was gone to a training program in Colorado.

While Erin was away, Adam went running with Nikita and Robby a few times, and he used the opportunity to ask her more questions about her life, and his dad's, before Minnesota. Adam had turned one of his final social studies papers last spring into a research project on the student left during the Cold War. With Nikita's help he had found his way to old newspaper pictures of his dad at protest marches, and eventually, of his dad after he was arrested, and at his trial for murder. Seeing his father as a young man, his hair long and wild and his expression haunted and dangerous even in the old, badly scanned newspaper pictures, had been both shocking and oddly impressive. He hadn't told Nikita that last bit; fairly certain it would have resulted in an impassioned lecture about dangerous acts and unintended consequences.

She was guarded in what she would tell him about what they actually did, but she was willing enough to talk with him about how weird it was to learn your whole life was a set up, almost from the beginning. "I was so proud of myself, for surviving on the streets. I never knew that my father had people watching me, from a distance, the whole time. They stepped in when I was on the edge of falling too deep to get up again. Those nights when, out of desperation, I might have taken that last wrong turn; someone or something better would turn up. I was able to stay clean, not turn tricks to stay alive. I thought it was luck or talent on my part, to find that one last way out. It wasn't."

"When did you figure it out?"

She laughed, panting as she pushed the jogging stroller up a slope. "After I realized that I'd been set up to be pulled into the organization, I started reconsidering everything. My sister later confirmed it all."

"So, you really do have a sister."

Nikita's eyes lit up with laugher again. "Yes! I really do have a sister. She doesn't live in Brisbane."

"Why did she show you that stuff about when you were homeless?"

"She thought I was too full of myself, and too dismissive of her because he had raised her in a gilded cage. She wanted me to know I'd been in a cage too, though not nearly as nice. The news was late in coming."

"Did you ever get to know her?"

"Oh yeah. Just because our father groomed us to take over for him didn't mean anyone else thought it was a good idea. We became partners by default, in order to survive. It turned out we worked well together."

"How did she feel about your leaving?"

"I suspect she was relieved. She was always afraid I wanted her job. I didn't, but she never believed me."

"Would she hunt you down?"

"My gamble has always been no. Not out of support, but as a waste of resources. No point in throwing good money after a bad end, she would say. My successor would be far more likely to be interested knowing my fate, one way or another. That, my sister might very well encourage, to protect her own position."

They sailed more this summer and camped less. Camping with a baby wasn't all that much fun, and Nikita and his dad loved to sail. Once they introduced her to sailing, Erin liked it too and, no big surprise, she really got into the weekly races. It was also cool how well she and Nikita got along, especially after they discovered that if they teamed up, they could wipe the court with him playing two-on-one-basketball in the driveway. At first he'd been inclined to be a little pissy about it, especially given the way Nikita and Erin kept high-fiving each other. But then his dad had looked at him and asked what exactly was his problem with having his girlfriend glowing and pumped up on victory endorphins. That's when Adam had begun to discover that the right kind of loss could be even better than the wrong kind of win.

On a Saturday afternoon late in August Adam and Erin were hanging around a booth on alternative energy sources that his friends Jon and Paul were working at an environmental fair, when Paul caught sight of Adam's dad strolling through the crowd. His dad had on sunglasses, and was carrying Robby in one of those front baby carrier things. Paul shook his head sadly and said, "I don't get it, man. How does your dad still look so cool? I mean, he's wearing a freaking baby."

Adam shrugged. "He says it's the shoes."

"What?"

"Look," Adam gestured with his chin. "He has on boots. Not gym shoes. It's the only difference between him and half the other guys here in jeans and a tee-shirt."

"There's got to be more to it than that."

"Yeah!" Jon exclaimed. "But you're never going to have it, so don't worry about it!"

Adam laughed and said nothing, because he knew exactly what Jon meant. His dad carried himself like he did because of all the hairy shit he had done in his life. Whatever he hadn't believed about their lives before, he did now. And now that he knew more about it, he would not wish that life on his friends. Even to become cool.

"And that's another thing you're not going to have." Jon nudged Paul and snickered. "Somebody like Nicole."

Erin immediately jumped to Paul's defense, heatedly arguing that Paul could too have a hot girlfriend someday, while Adam watched Nikita snake her slim, tan arms around his dad from behind, kissing his neck before slinking around him to drop a kiss on Robby's head, the sun glinting off her yellow hair. And right at the very moment, his dad's old girlfriend Marie walked out of the crowd and practically straight into his dad and Nikita.

****

Nikita felt Michael stiffen and turned to find him greeting a short woman with red-hennaed curls.

"Hello Marie." Michael leaned awkwardly over to drop a kiss on each of her cheeks, one hand wrapped around Robby's round little belly.

"Mike." The woman looked up at him. And smiled brightly. "And, who is this?" She nodded at Robby.

"This is Robby," he said. Then he turned and pulled Nikita around so he could introduce her. "And this is Nicole. Robby's mom. Nicole, this is Marie."

Nikita stuck out her hand. "Hi. Nice to meet you Marie."

"Nice to meet you too." Marie smiled as she took Nikita's hand in her own, but she kept darting her eyes between Nikita, Michael and Robby and her question was too powerful for Nikita to ignore, even though she was sure Michael would have.

Nikita said, "You must be the French professor."

"Yeah." Marie shook her head a little. "And, you must be, Mike's new girlfriend?"

"Yes. Since last summer."

"Oh?" Marie's glance went to Robby again.

"Mike is Robby's dad. Yes." Nikita laughed then, to make it joke everyone else would have to laugh at, and took Michael's arm. "Even Mike can't defeat the power of a broken condom."

Marie grimaced politely at the bad joke, and then said, "So, you're married, then?"

Nikita shook her head. "No."

"Marie?" A slight, sandy-haired haired man came up to their little group, pushing a stroller with a baby who looked to be about a year old. "There you are," he said.

"Hi!" Marie gave the man a big kiss, then still holding on to him, she turned back to Michael and Nikita. "This is my husband, Kevin Smith. He's in physics. It's crazy, but we met on the plane to Aix en Provence two years ago. Both of us going to the university there for a semester. And this is Katie, our daughter. Kevin? This is Mike."

Michael smiled then, and held out his hand. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Kevin."

Kevin took it, smiling himself. "Mike, eh? Nice to meet you too."

Nikita asked them a few easy questions about their research, gently deflected their questions about her, and eased herself and Michael away. "So." She said. "That's Marie."

"Yes."

"She's pretty."

"Mmm."

"And she looked happy."

"Yes."

"So stop feeling guilty. You really aren't responsible for everyone you ever cared about."

Michael didn't answer, other than to smile slightly and rest a warm, possessive hand on her hip as they walked toward their car.


	9. Chapter 9

The summer ended in a blaze of red and gold leaves that were pounded flat and brown by a series of thunderstorms throughout October. Nikita decided that she had never been so cold in her life as she was sitting on the sidelines, watching high school soccer in the rain that was rain only because it was just barely too warm for it to be snow. Adam's team did better this year, making it to the semi-finals. Adam himself had a strong enough junior-year that his coach started talking about the possibility of Adam being recruited next autumn, to play for a college team after he finished high school. Sometime that fall, watching them standing together on the sidelines, she also realized that Adam was now as tall as Michael, which surprised her a bit, though she didn't know why it should.

Nikita cautiously proposed joining them at mass some Sundays, but Adam pointed out that he and Michael had virtually quit attending the winter before due to weekend competitions, and he said he didn't really miss it.

Nikita was taking two more university courses, not so much working toward anything as exploring things she had never had the time to study before. This semester it was another women's studies class and, branching out, an introductory course in geology. The Section had provided a thorough education in the things they cared about, but as they had cared about neither the structures of oppression nor about natural science, Nikita had learned little of either, and she was discovering that both fascinated her.

Through the women's studies department she also started volunteering at a local women's shelter. If, as she told Michael, she wasn't saving the world anymore, it filled part of that void to make a difference, one desperate woman at a time.

To make up for blowing off his own birthday the previous year, Adam and his friend Charlie begged to have a large, joint seventeenth birthday celebration. They proposed holding it on Halloween, as a costume party. Nikita and Michael and Charlie's parents, Dan and Shelia, took a deep breath, metaphorically gripped each other's hands, and said yes.

The night of the party Nikita felt like she had accidentally fallen into a Hollywood movie about idealized teenaged life, the kind she had watched with both longing and contempt when she was a teen. There was a live band made up of friends from Adam's high school doing passable covers of current music, and pretty good covers of punk classics. Because Charlie and Adam had always gone to different schools, between them there were dozens of teenaged guests, costumed in a dizzying array of monsters and ghouls and superheroes, flushed and sweaty, dancing to the music and flirting with each other. Though there was no booze beyond the more brazen guests who showed up already buzzed, the guests seemed quite happy with the snacks, soda and the vast birthday cake they did have. Adam wore an Aladdin costume complete with fake sword and gold earrings and Erin chose to dress up as the beer icon, St. Pauli's Girl, assuming St. Pauli's Girl wore size eleven Doc Martens. When Nikita raised her eyebrows at them, they laughed and said they had tried it the other way, Adam in lederhosen and Erin as a belly dancer, but they liked this better.

Their 'charity deer hunt' of the previous November had lodged in Adam's imagination, and this year he pulled in Charlie and his brother and sister as well. That week they carried six deer to the processing center. Erin also came along on the trip, though she refused to hunt herself.

Once the snow season began, Nikita felt as though their lives more or less permanently re-located to the local ski lodge. Erin and Adam were both competing with their high school and local club teams. Erin started stretching out her leads over the regional competition even further, while Adam had improved so much that when he broke his snowboard landing a particularly exciting maneuver, the snowboard factory rep at the competition walked over and offered to supply him with new equipment on the spot. Though Michael would have preferred Adam not draw attention to himself that way, Nikita pointed out that once the offer had been made, turning it down was as problematic as accepting it, so Adam might as well have the pleasure of the earned recognition.

Because they would not be able to have the same kind of vacation with Robby along, Nikita and Michael decided to let Adam go on the winter trip west to train without them. Instead they spent the time playing with Robby, who at eight months old was laughing and burbling baby-syllables and sitting and crawling and wanting to stand up holding onto anyone's hands. He was also still completely bald, and his eyes had stayed bright blue. At first, Nikita tried not to sit around with a fatuous grin as she watched Michael play with Robby, but then she decided that she had survived unbelievable odds to get here, and if she wanted to curl up in a chair in front of the fire and watch Michael with their baby, that was absolutely her prerogative.

In January, Nikita offered to redesign the website for the women's resources center, and she started two more courses at the University, this time both in natural sciences. She sometimes toyed with the possibility of actually committing to the program in environmental science, but told herself she had time to do that later if she wanted to.

Spending so much time at the ski lodge, Nikita renewed her casual friendships with the women she had met there the year before. Drifting through their orbits, even with her cover firmly anchored in Robby's squirming little body, left Nikita feeling splintered and volatile. Working at the shelter, helping frightened women struggling to remake their lives and protect their children was a familiar environment. Between her own childhood and her years at the Section, she felt oddly relaxed among desperate, angry people. It was the easy comfort and security her skiing friends enjoyed that made her feel dizzy and out-of-balance, trapped in the dissonance between what she was before and what she was now. She had never in her life spent much time with people like the women she skied with, people who never worried about having enough food or a safe place to eat it. People whose daily concerns were many safe steps removed from worries about shelter, or security, or simply staying alive another day. Now that she occupied the same place, she found herself struggling with guilt over her own security in the face of the precarious lives endured by so many.

Her nagging disquiet with her apparent uselessness in the world had the bizarre consequence of bringing her and Michael still closer together. When she told him about her uneasiness with her own safety and comfort, Michael responded by talking freely with her, for their first time in their lives, about his own politics. It was a part of himself he had walled off so completely to survive in the Section that she had never had the chance to see how deep or radical his convictions really were. She finally understood now, how having known him, or of him, when he was young, people as diverse as Rene, Satin or Grenet simply could not believe he had really turned his back on his former self. They talked, and argued, and debated radical politics so much that Nikita started reading on the sly so she could hold her own, and Adam started begging them to please, please get through an evening without mentioning the word 'capitalism.' Since energetic intellectual engagement seemed to have a strong correlation with energetic, engaged sex, they had trouble respecting his request.

Adam managed to qualify for the national snowboard tournament in his age group – at the bottom of the Midwestern team, but qualify he did – and so he and Erin spent most of March and early April traveling. Because Michael's schedule was the most flexible, he undertook the bulk of the chaperoning, driving, hauling, and waiting. Erin's parents flew out to catch her major races and Nikita and Robby tagged along to watch and ring cowbells for Adam at the snowboard junior nationals.

In mid April, Robby turned one and celebrated by walking across the living room, from his father's hands to his brother's.

That night, after she rocked Robby to sleep as she always did, she stayed rocking for a long time, unwilling to relinquish his sleep-heavy, sweet-smelling body to his crib. She rocked so long Michael eventually came looking for her, appearing as a shadowed outline in the darkened door. Resting her cheek against Robby's head, she said quietly, "This has been the best year of my life. Thank you."

"You did all the hard parts."

Nikita kissed Robby, then rose and put him to bed. Joining Michael in the hall, she took his hands in her own and leaned in to press a gentle kiss on his lips. Resting her cheek against his, she said, "I never would have had the chance, if you hadn't made a home for me." Tugging him back downstairs, she grinned at him and bumped him gently with her shoulder as they went. "Anyway, it hasn't felt hard. Robby is an easy baby, at least if the other moms at toddler time are to be believed!"

Michael pulled her close and kissed her temple. "You like being a mom. It makes you happy."

Nikita leaned into his embrace and kissed him back. "I do. And, it does."

He brushed her eyebrow with his fingers, his gaze never leaving hers. "That's all that matters."

Adam and Erin marked prom season by getting matching shoulder tattoos, which was not quite what Nikita had envisioned when they said they were going to the mall to go shopping for something to wear. She didn't tell them she thought it was more giddily romantic than any organdy dress, even if the tats themselves were pretty fierce. Then they went to a movie, instead of to the dance. They also wanted to go camping again over Memorial Day. Michael and Nikita agreed to let them go completely without supervision as long as the group stayed small. Nikita knew Michael was sorely tempted to go check on them anyway, but she reminded him that Adam was seventeen and a half years old, quite old enough, among other things, to be tried as an adult for certain felonies and to be recruited to the Section for crimes, committed or alleged. Then she kissed him, and pulled him back to bed. Not that Michael protested.

*****

Long afterward, Michael wondered if they all had known somehow that it would be the last one. For all of them, that summer felt nearly magical, as though it were drenched in golden light all the time, even on rainy days.

All the proper elements of a perfect northern summer were present: barbeques, kite flying and picnics; sailboat races, fishing, and outdoor music festivals. They even took a ten-day canoe and camping trip in the wilderness recreation area that sprawled over the border between Canada and Minnesota. Nikita offered to stay behind, and let Michael and Adam go alone, but Adam earnestly assured them that he wanted her and Robby both to come. Michael suspected that Nikita and Robby probably provided sufficient cover for Erin to be invited too, and it turned out he was right. Not that he minded. He liked to camp, and he liked camping with Nikita, and it would have been hard to be away from Robby for so long.

Robby was starting to talk and to run, and had fallen in love with throwing balls for others to retrieve. He would trail through the house and the yard, hard on his brother's heels, ball in hand, crying Adam's name and begging him to play.

And Adam would laugh and scoop him up and toss him, shrieking with delight, high into the air, and play ball with him. And Michael would want desperately to freeze each moment in time, so that he could stay there forever, watching the sons he had never thought he would have roll laughing in the grass in the high clear light of the long northern summer evenings.

Because Adam was still working for Michael, playing soccer and spending time with his friends and with Erin, they saw him only sporadically outside of planned events like the weekly sailing races or their trip to the boundary waters. Most days it was just Michael and Nikita and Robby. They spent many of their evenings pushing baby swings and walking or jogging in the local parks, talking about what they might do after Adam left for college.

Pulling a rock out of Robbie's hands before he put it in his mouth as he played in the large sand box, Nikita said, "I see all these places where I know, given my experiences," here she shot Michael a laughing look, "I could make a huge difference just by running things more effectively and efficiently."

"But?"

"But that isn't very consistent with keeping a low profile."

"No."

"I know why you chose house painting, over, say, computer consulting or something like that."

"Yes."

"Of course," and here her glance was sharp and appraising, "Ten years in and you are bored out of your mind."

Michael laughed then, because it was true, and something he had started trying to resolve on his own. "Yes."

"So, what the hell should we do with ourselves for the next twenty years?"

Michael pushed the toy truck back toward Robby with his toe. "I still don't know."

"I thought for a while about art, sculpture maybe, but I seem to have lost my interest in that. I thought about organic farming…" she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, then burst out laughing. "Yeah. That's the look of horror I thought I would see!"

"How do you feel about sailing around the world?" He asked.

She cocked her head. "Are you being serious?"

"I think so."

"Adam?'

"Is very ready to be more on his own."

"So," Nikita slid closer to him. "Your idea is just you and me, the baby, and the deep blue sea?"

Michael smiled, sailing already in the happiness in her eyes. "Yes."

She leaned in to kiss him, breathing, "nice!" just before her lips met his.

*****

After a summer like that, fall could not help but be a time of change. Erin was invited to join one of the elite ski clubs out west, and finish her final year of high school while training intensively with top coaches. She left for Colorado just before Labor Day. Michael did not ask, but Adam offered that he and Erin had decided to end their relationship and stay friends, rather than try to continue as they had before but at a distance.

Joe Knutsen passed away in early September, after a short battle with prostate cancer. Adam served at the altar as an acolyte for the last time, and Michael cried at the first funeral mass he had attended since the one for his parents. After that, Michael invited Geoff to buy in as a partner and he spent even less time working. Instead he spent time at home with Robby and Nikita, and reading, and thinking. He began to revise and update their plans for how they might leave Minnesota permanently, without causing distress or dangerous curiosity among their many friends. He started running longer distances and working out more often, with Nikita and alone, trying to find clarity through physical exertion.

Adam had an excellent soccer season personally, but to his frustration his team was struggling. His coach had proven accurate, though, in his feeling that Adam would have college recruiters from around the state wanting to talk with them about playing at the next level.

In early October, after their third coffee meeting with a college coach in as many days, when Adam had taken off to catch up on his schoolwork, Michael looked at Nikita, who was scowling and absently tapping a pencil against the paper in front of her, and said, "you feel it too?"

She put the pencil down and looked up, faint relief in her eyes. "Yes."

"Anything other than feeling?"

"No." She shrugged in frustration. "And I've been looking."

He shared her frustration. He could find nothing out of place, despite discretely rigorous searching, but he felt the crosshairs on them all the same. "Me too."

She took his hand and squeezed tightly and met his gaze. "It's time to go."

He squeezed back. "Yes. I think it is."

She asked, "When?"

"Sooner is better."

She offered, "Thanksgiving would be a nice window."

"That gives us almost seven weeks."

She frowned. "Too long?"

Michael shook his head. "I think anything much sooner would be too fast, but that's the outside limit."

"I agree. When do we tell Adam?"

"As soon as the soccer season ends? On his birthday?"

Nikita shook her head. "That's a rough way to turn eighteen. Happy Birthday. Say good bye to your life."

"We could wait until the last minute."

"I think that's unfair to him."

"The end of soccer season then."

Over the years Michael had stashed a half dozen cars in various locations in a grid surrounding the city, all fully stocked with hidden cash, IDs, passports, and weapons. With Nikita's help, they began to move them into the most likely locations. They also worked out their cover stories and made arrangements for postcards and email messages from Australia to arrive for their closest friends at suitable intervals until they trickled out.

By himself, Michael prepared the paperwork to shift the boat and the house and everything in it to the company's ownership, and in turn for the company to go to Geoff in its entirety after the New Year. He also left a letter for Geoff, explaining that because Geoff would have to pay all the legal fees and take a fairly substantial tax hit as a result of all the new titles, he owed Michael nothing further.

Michael and Nikita's workouts at the dojo picked up steadily in intensity and frequency, and they worked out more at home as well. When friends commented on it, Michael and Nikita laughingly pointed to their looming birthdays. Michael would be fifty and Nikita would be forty soon, and they swore that this was the reason for them both to be focusing on fitness and strength training. Their friends laughed too, and nodded in sympathetic understanding. Fitness was a side benefit it was true, but it was mostly about stress management, and they were honest with each other about that.

Their sex life also changed again. Their first excitement at being back together, and then in Nikita's pregnant body, slid slowly into the comfort and amazed satisfaction of actually living together every day. They had finally had the time to be playful, and to explore fantasies that their lives in the Section had given them plenty of time to imagine but no opportunity to realize. Over the summer, their lovemaking had been especially languid and slow; teasing and tempting and holding each other at the edge for as long as possible. It was part and parcel of the whole feeling of existing inside a protected golden haze, and they had reveled in time and the belief that they really had years ahead to share together. With the fall, and their growing anxiety over being watched, an old, familiar desperation and intense desire re-entered their sex life. They fucked more often, and it was harder, faster, and more explosive, for both of them.

Being with Robby was one of the few things that could make Michael feel calmer, but Robby picked up on the underlying tension and his next round of teething was grim for everyone, especially because he managed to catch a cold that turned into an ear infection. This resulted in a cranky, feverish, clinging, snot-filled toddler who cried more than he laughed


	10. Chapter 10

Adam was more glad than usual that his dad was unfailingly on time to pick him up after practice. It had been another weird day. He had tried to shrug off the feeling that his skin was too tight and his routines too small as an early case of senior-itis, or missing Erin, or both, but he didn't believe himself any longer. Or, at least, he didn't entirely believe himself. He could see that most of his friends were beginning to be restless, talking about colleges and SATs, but they were also excited about stuff happening right now, at school.

But Adam was not interested in school at all these days, except that his friends were there and he had to be there too, to stay on the soccer team. He couldn't work up any enthusiasm for talking about college with anyone, not even prospective coaches. He had grown up in the shadow of the University of Minnesota, and had no desire to go there, but no place else he had thought about had appealed to him either. Also, though it had taken him a while to notice, his dad and Nikita had abruptly stopped talking about colleges about ten days ago, best he could remember, when it had been a regular topic before that. Then today, Jon and Paul were all about the SAT prep class the three of them were supposed to take soon and Adam realized he had forgotten all about it. But, for all that, he didn't think the feeling was really about college.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Adam said, "Dad? Do you ever get the feeling that something's just not right with somebody, but you don't know what, exactly?"

"Why do you ask?"

Adam sighed, but plunged on, not wanting to be distracted today by his father's always-irritating question. "This is going to sound really weird, I know, but it's about this new girl. Just, things about her feel, off."

He fell silent.

His dad said, "Tell me more."

"She's just, odd." Adam waved his hand in the air, trying to explain a feeling without words. "Maybe she's just really awkward, I mean, she makes everyone a little twitchy. She crowds us. She hangs out waiting to be included just that little bit too long. She doesn't get the hint no one likes her enough to want her hanging with us."

Adam frowned, now that he'd said it out loud like that, it sounded silly. But he had not really gotten to the worst of it either. He went on, "For a while she's been trying to get me to go places alone with her. You know, like a coffee shop to do homework. She always makes this big deal, that 'it's not a date or anything'." Adam rolled his eyes. "Like, she thinks I'm stupid or something."

"She could just be really awkward about expressing her interest in you."

"She's Goth, dad. Usually those girls are pretty straight up."

His dad didn't say anything, so after a pause, Adam went on. "And even if she is awkward, it's getting weird, that no matter how often I shoot her down, she comes bouncing back the next day like it never happened." Adam shook his head in frustration. "Some of the guys on the team have started calling her my little fan girl, which is just gross, you know?"

"Well, stay with what you're doing; be polite but distant."

"I can't get more distant without ditching school!" He heard his voice rise with frustration and consciously modulated it back down. "I already think about where she might be so I can make sure to be somewhere else. I've actually got Jon and Paul and Lily acting as lookouts so I'll know when she's coming and I can cut and run before she finds me."

"Go on."

"So, I guess, my question is, could I have actually picked up some kind of freaky stalker chick? And, if I have, what do I do now?"

"That is one possibility."

His dad fell silent and Adam risked a sideways glance. His dad's face was expressionless as he said, "There is another explanation."

Adam tried to sound cool, like he hadn't already thought of this, every time stalker-girl asked him a prying question about his dad, or Nicole, or Robby, or after he had noticed that she watched practices, but never came to the games. "What?"

"We've been found."

Adam's heart started pounding very fast, and he had to struggle to take a deep breath.

His dad asked, "Do you think you could arrange to have this girl come along with your whole group, someplace public and busy, so that Nicole and I could get a good look at her?"

Adam was silent for a long time. All the sounds of the car, including the fan belt that had started to rattle a bit, the hiss of the tires on the road, the faint rumbling as his dad stepped on the gas as each light turned green, the clicking of the turn signal, the rushing of the cars next to them, filled his head until they were all drowned out by the sound of his own pulse hammering in his ears. Eventually, he said, "Okay. I can do that. And her name is Anne."

It took another ten days for Adam to arrange it, because soccer playoffs took precedence. The team went to the semi finals again, and lost again, and Adam had to spend several days stomping around in a black mood before he could focus on anything else. It seemed majestically unfair to him that he should have the best season of his life the year after the top scorers had graduated.

Once he was ready, it was scary-easy to set up – Anne was so pathetically eager to be included. Adam even figured out how to maneuver his friend Katie into actually doing the organizing while Anne was, as usual, hanging uninvited around their lunch table. She was part of it simply by being there at the time the plans were made.

******

Once they finally had a chance to observe Adam and his friends plus the new girl, Anne, Nikita was not sure if she and Michael had learned anything concrete at all. Anne really could have been merely a socially awkward girl; new to the school, trying to latch on to a stable group of friends, and with a powerful crush on Adam she didn't know how to control. Or she could have been a youngish operative trying to fit into a foreign environment and get close to her target.

Afterwards, the four them, Adam, Nikita, and Michael carrying Robby in a backpack, took a long Sunday hike and went over Adam's whole experience with the new girl, and then everything else since the start of school that had led to him feeling 'something was off.' Then Michael and Nikita in turn laid out what they had seen and felt. Individually, all their stories added up to maybe nothing at all. Put together, Nikita saw the outlines of a distressingly familiar pattern.

She said, "They're trying really hard not to spook us. I think they must have found us toward the end of the summer, and now they're just gathering intel. Trying to determine the strength and extent of our network."

"Yes." Michael agreed. "They could have attempted to bring us in if that's all they wanted."

Adam asked, "So, what do we do?"

They told him.

"Just like that? Bam? I lose everything just because some pathetic wanna-be Goth girl gives me a weird vibe?"

"It isn't the only reason. You've just heard all the rest," Michael said.

"What if it's all really nothing? What if we're just imagining it? Why should we run out on my life because you guys say so?"

Michael replied, "That's why we aren't running right this minute. We won't abandon what we have unless we're certain we must."

Nikita added, "I'm going to try to find out more about this girl, Anne, and I think I have some better ideas now about where else to look for watchers. Michael is going to finish setting up the details of our exit, and you're going to keep going to school like nothing has changed."

Adam glared at her. "You don't believe that this is nothing. You had already made up your minds even before you spied on us, and I didn't get a vote, did I? So, why don't we just head out to go deer hunting week after next, and not come back, and stop pretending?"

Michael said, "I need a little more time to finish making arrangements here, so our friends don't do anything foolish to look for us. And," Michael hesitated for the briefest of moments, then continued, "we need to talk about what you should tell Erin so she won't expect to see you again."

Adam paled and his eyes went wide and dark with shock as he turned to stare at Michael. "Erin?"

Nikita had been steeling herself for this one for weeks, but it still hurt like hell when she said, "Yes. I'm sorry Adam, but for her safety as well as ours, you have to cut all contact with Erin too."

Nikita nearly cried herself when Adam's eyes filmed with sudden tears. She touched his sleeve. "You don't have to lie to her. Because she already knows about what happened when you were little, you can tell her a story that's mostly true. She won't panic when she doesn't hear from you anymore. She'll understand why we have to go."

Once she was alone, Nikita indulged in bouts of angry panic, livid that the Section should be targeting Adam, and not her and Michael. Terrified by the way the setup reeked of recruitment, and furious that it would cost Adam everything he knew for them to snatch him free from the net drawing close around him.

She finished her sprint, blew the hair off her cheeks and snarled, "I hate the way they act like they're running some sort of feudal kingdom, right down to their obsession with oracles and blood lines and missing heirs."

Michael, running behind her with Robby in the jogging stroller, caught up with her and shrugged. "They came into existence to maintain and expand the European empires. Of course they are feudal."

Nikita was in no mood to be dragged into anarchist critique of the Sections today, though she knew it would probably make Michael feel better. She was worried about Adam, and that's what she wanted to talk about. "Adam already has skills and potential they would exploit to the fullest. But to help him stay free, we increase the chances he would thrive inside. By running, we actually make him even more appealing. Because we will have trained him."

She knew she was saying it aloud because she was too frustrated to keep silent, not because she thought Michael had not already realized all this himself.

"Yes."

"God damn it." She glared at him, willing him to express some of his own anger and fear. Of course he did not. He had gone completely stone-faced again. She reminded herself once more that this was how he had performed best, while at his peak as a field operative. So instead, she offered, "Three falls out of five at the dojo tonight?"

He smiled, briefly and without humor. "Yes."

Adam kept his eighteenth birthday celebration low key, inviting a group of his closest friends, both boys and girls, over to supper and an overnight party built around their favorite computer games. Nikita gathered Anne had tried to wrangle an invitation, but had been firmly, and possibly rudely, shut down.

The night after his party, over dinner, Nikita and Michael gave Adam their gift, his first handgun. Nikita had refused to wrap it in festive paper, remembering all too painfully her own 'gift' of a gun from Michael on her first, terrifying mission. Her heart felt like it was squeezing in half as Adam accepted the case from Michael, but he was not her, and his situation was not the same. Adam looked a little grim and a little sad, but he was not shocked. And, of course, there was no immediate mission where he would risk death on an empty stomach. When she stole a glance at Michael she was even more surprised, for instead of looking sad and guilty, as she had expected, he looked fiercely satisfied.

Adam had not wanted to go deer hunting at all, but was willing to be convinced that they needed to stick with their normal routines. Nikita pointed out that she hadn't quit her classes either, even though she obviously wasn't going to be able to finish them, because that would be a giant sign of their impending exit. Which reminded her, he needed to keep his grades up to his previous high standards for the same reason.

*****

The weeks of November sped past and, for Michael, the dominant mood at their house was a curiously heady mix of self-conscious melancholy and barely suppressed excitement. The melancholy Michael understood. They were getting ready to abandon a life more than a decade in the making, and it had been a good one, for Adam, for him, and though for a shorter time, for Nikita and Robby too. It was also in part a result of November in Minnesota, grey skies, leafless trees, faint snow flurries that dusted and melted, carrying no promise of the deep white of full winter. And as the fall ended, so too was their time in St. Paul. Michael knew it was impossible to avoid a certain romantic sadness at the inevitability of change, no matter how clichéd.

At the same time, Michael recognized that they were all energized by the changes that were coming, even and maybe especially himself. They had all of them outgrown the snug haven he had built for Adam's childhood. He had been looking forward to leaving Minnesota for some time, and while he could wish they were leaving on their own schedule and not in flight, he was ready to go even as he knew intimately the price of what he was leaving behind. Nikita had found a safe harbor to have a baby, but since then had constructed no real place for herself in their life in St. Paul, and she was as eager as Michael was for the freedom to create something new, something that included her and Robby from the beginning.

As for Adam, he had been straining against the boundaries of their lives even before Erin was invited west. In the months since he had started his senior year in high school, he had changed again. Michael thought it was like watching him shed another skin. The last of the adolescent softness faded away from his face, and Michael knew, looking at him, that he was finally seeing Adam as he would be for many years to come. Adam was also reaching new levels of comfort and control in his body. While he certainly still made plenty of noise, especially when he was with his friends, when they were alone Adam had begun to move quietly and fluidly in the world, reaching the point where he could actually startle Michael and Nikita by appearing before they heard him, accustomed as they had been to always knowing where he was merely by the sounds of his progress through space.

Unhappily, Michael discovered he could not dwell for long on the tremendous pride he had in Adam because it rapidly devolved into recognition of just how valuable Adam could be to the Section. That way led to rage and panic, neither of which was useful in their current profile.

After recovering from the initial shock, this new, rapidly maturing Adam was more than willing to throw himself into whatever task they set for him. Unfortunately, as far as Adam was concerned, what they wanted him to do was continue to behave as if his high school and his teammates and his classes and his friends remained the center of his world.

Then Michael and Nikita asked him to make some small gestures toward warming up to Anne, to give her a small taste of success and a reason for the Section to leave the situation as it was.

"How the hell do I do that?"

Nikita smirked at Michael and said, "ask your dad."

Michael held her gaze until her cheeks flushed and then he said, "You're as good at it as I am."

"Hey. Guys." Adam snapped his fingers at them. "My life. Focus!"

The only time they faced any resistance at all was when Adam flatly refused to attend the first meetings of the ski and snowboard team and the ski club.

Adam glared at Michael as he repeated himself for the third time. "I won't be here to board, and the hill won't even be open before Thanksgiving, it's been too warm this fall. Why should I waste my time?"

"Because it looks like you think you won't be here to board, which is a giant flag for your watcher." Michael was getting tired of repeating himself as well.

"Fine." Adam threw up his hands. "I'll tell everybody it's because I don't want to compete without Erin around."

"And why would anyone watching believe you? Your non-existent despondence over her leaving?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You haven't had any trouble 'hooking up'," Michael made sure Adam heard the quotation marks he put around the phrase, "with several partners since Erin left. Why would anyone believe that her absence makes snowboarding too difficult for you?"

Adam looked both shocked and infuriated. "How the fuck do you know that?"

"I've been watching the people who are watching you."

"Jesus! Dad! I thought the whole point of not being caught by your old organization was so that I could have a life of my own! If you're going to be spying on my every move, what the fuck difference does it make?"

Nikita intervened before Michael could speak, which was a relief because he did not know what to say. "The difference between being watched by your father and being watched by the Section is the difference between being watched by someone who cares for you and being watched by something that believes it owns you. Our old organization will watch and record every private moment of your life so as to learn how best to manipulate and tear you down so you will carry out every despicable task they give you."

Adam narrowed his eyes. "You were in charge, right? How bad could it be?"

Nikita's expression changed. Her usually generous mouth flattened and the warmth in her eyes drained away. She reached out and jerked Adam by his jacket until his face was inches from hers. Her voice dropped even below her normal husky register and in it, Michael could hear the sound of breaking bones and splitting flesh. "If my choice was to strip you down to nothing more than a tool in my hand, or allow a slave ring to continue to operate out of a refugee camp, I would bend you until you broke. And I was the good Operations."

Michael wasn't sure what Adam saw in Nikita's face as she held his stare, but he saw his shoulders slump when he capitulated. She tossed him back and Adam staggered against a park bench to catch his balance. Once he was on his feet again, he shook his collar back into shape and fastened his gaze on the horizon. "Okay. I'll go to the meetings."

Nikita sighed, and Michael watched the black shadows of the past settle into her eyes, even as her expression relaxed. She said, "It sucks for you, that we are who we are. We know that, and we can't change it. All we can do is make the best of what we have."

That night Michael and Nikita both had trouble sleeping, and so they made love for a long, long time.

Erin got home day before Thanksgiving, and Adam took her out to tell her he was leaving. He did not come back to the house until the next morning, and Michael and Nikita did not ask him where he had been.

They had already packed the truck with their gear, and dropped the now quite elderly dogs off with Geoff and Allison, promising to see them the following weekend, after their extended college visitation trip with Adam. They left as soon as Adam showered and ate breakfast.

They drove out of St. Paul, headed for Chicago. They confirmed their tail, as expected, about thirty miles south of Minneapolis. At the next big gas station, Michael and Nikita got out of the truck, told Adam to keep driving until he heard from them, handed him a new cell phone, advised him to wait to shoot anyone who tried to stop him until they were close enough to hit with certainty, and headed for a car they had stashed there earlier. Adam was pale, but nodded, and drove off with Robby without a word.

Michael and Nikita caught up with Adam just outside Madison, Wisconsin, where they changed cars again. Adam asked, "What happened?"

Nikita answered from the back seat, where she was sitting with her hand on Robby's leg as he slept in his carseat. Michael knew, as he watched her thumb gently stroking Robby's overalls, that she could not bear to stop touching him, reassuring herself that for now, they were still together. She answered Adam. "We stopped them. It was Anne, and a partner."

"Where are they now?" Adam asked.

Michael, who was driving again, said, "They aren't following us anymore."

After a time, Adam asked, "Will there be others?"

Michael replied, "Maybe. But for now, we think we're clear. A bigger operation would have left a stronger footprint."

"So, what now? You guys wouldn't tell me, before."

Michael exchanged a quiet look with Nikita through the rearview mirror. She flashed a bright smile back at him, happy to share their plans at last, and then she said to Adam. "How do you feel about skiing in Chile?"

"What?" He frowned. "It's the wrong season to ski in Chile."

"It won't be, by the time we get there."

Adam spun around to look at her. "No way."

Nikita grinned and nodded at him. "Way."

"Drive? You guys want to drive to Chile?"

"Yeah. Why not? Lots to see along the trip. And we might hike some of it. And sail some of it."

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Seriously?"

Michael caught Nikita's eye again as he smiled. "Yes."

"Oh man." Adam sat back and stared out at the highway for a long time. Then he said, "Wow. Chile."

And a while later he said, "Cool."

 

*****

End


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